jQuery unserialize data serialized by PHP - php

Question

How can I unserialize data in jQuery? remember data is Serialized by PHP. Below is given example.
a:2:{i:0;s:9:" img1.jpeg";i:1;s:9:"img2.jpeg";}

Answer 1

This can be achieved using unserialize and json_encode
$unserialized = unserialize($serialized_from_db);
echo json_encode($unserialized);
But please note your sample provided: s:9:" img1.jpeg" this part is incorrect. The s:9 means it expects string to be 9 bytes (this link provides a good guide on understanding output from serialize), however " img1.jpeg has a space and therefore is 10 bytes and fails: demo failing. You can add a check to see if this failes to unserialize:
if ($unserialized === false)
When you fix the incorrect part to: s:9:"img1.jpeg, giving you:
a:2:{i:0;s:9:"img1.jpeg";i:1;s:9:"img2.jpeg";}
will now work, see demo.
At the end of the day I would recommend as others have above, to store json_encoded values in your database rather than serialized values.
I came up with a really hacky hack to potentially fix bad serialized data:
<?php
function hackFixUnserialized($unserialized_string) {
$parts = explode(';', $unserialized_string);
foreach ($parts as &$part) {
$kv = explode(':', $part);
if ($kv[0] == 's') {
$str_without_quotes = str_replace('"', '', $kv[2]);
if ($kv[1] != strlen($str_without_quotes)) {
$kv[1] = strlen($str_without_quotes);
}
}
$part = implode(':', $kv);
}
return implode(';', $parts);
}
$unserialized_from_db = <<<EOT
a:2:{i:0;s:9:" img1.jpeg";i:1;s:9:"img2.jpeg";}
EOT;
$unserialized = unserialize($unserialized_from_db);
if ($unserialized === false) {
$hack_fix = hackFixUnserialized($unserialized_from_db);
printf('bad unserialized, fixed to: %s%s', $hack_fix, PHP_EOL);
$unserialized = unserialize($hack_fix);
}
echo json_encode($unserialized);
Demo of it here: https://eval.in/783408
Hope this helps