I'll keep it short and sweet Derick ! =] http://opensource.dynamoid.com/ -> Is exactly what I was thinking of, glad I asked so I am not re-inventing the wheel :) I have a feeling I can get educated really fast on php data-type internals by taking a look at the source.
Thanks again! On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Derick Rethans <der...@php.net> wrote: > On Thu, 18 Mar 2010, Ben DeMott wrote: > >> So is the data structure thats being serialized remaining in some form >> thats reflective of its binary encoding on the system. Or is there >> some byte-encoding that goes on to generalize the binary structure? > > PHP only knows about binary text, and then numbers and floats. Our > current serialize format is just text based. > >> I guess ... Does it find the values in memory of the distinct values, >> and then create a serialized set of indexes in a c-compatible >> data-type? >> or... is this just another form of string serialization, where >> variables are represented by strings encoded in ASCII? > > The current serializer does do the latter. pecl/dbus does... DBUS > serialization of course. > >> If this is a binary serialization two additional questions: >> 1.) Does this mean that you can to some accuracy determine the size of >> an in-memory variable by counting the sizeof() on the components that >> make up the data-structure in C? > > nope, that won't work as there are strings that are at least two blocks, > and arrays and objects are tons. > >> 2.) Can the PHP sessions serialization be made to use this type of >> serialization - so the serialized values could be shared between >> multiple applications.. (let me give you an example) > > Thereis an igbinary extension/serializer. > >> Would I be better off just re-implementing the PHP C code for its >> session serializer/deserializer in Python than attempting to keep it >> binary? > > What you want... both work. > >> For PHP Sessions, lets say you use memcached to store a serialized >> representation of the session. >> Lets also say that you would like to read that session data >> occasionally by python to offload work that your webserver would >> normally have to perform. >> >> If you were to write a binary serialized form to memory - the C >> implementation of the serialization could by very easily ported to >> Python as an extension and both could be maintained with ease >> (as both PHP and Python are written in C, a Java variant wouldn't be >> too hard either using JNI) > > The problem is that PHP and Python have different dataytpes, and dbus > has yet again others. That is always going to be a problem. > >> I guess this brings up the question of - How hard would it be to >> expose the binary object that dbus sends over-the-wire so it could be >> written to file instead? > > You need a tool such as dbus-monitor, but you need to write the > deserialization from DBUS into your "fileformat" yet again. > >> Overall it would be nice if PHP had a functionality similar to Pythons >> Pickle -> to expose to the user so they could store binary >> representations of objects as they saw fit. >> >> It seems to me this would be vastly more efficient than an >> ascii-encoding and serialization as well. > > That's no different from what serialization does really. There is > http://opensource.dynamoid.com/ for binary serializations. > >> If my logic is poorly formed because of a lack of understanding please >> feel free to educate me! > > You write too much text :P > > regards, > Derick > > -- > http://derickrethans.nl | http://xdebug.org > Like Xdebug? Consider a donation: http://xdebug.org/donate.php > twitter: @derickr and @xdebug > -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
