Unserialsed Array giving the weirdest results - php

Question

I've a really odd issue today. I've got a serialised array that looks like this:
a:4:{i:0;s:7:"Perfect";i:1;s:10:"jawel hoor";i:2;s:14:"Ach jawohl joh";i:3;s:2:"Ja";}
Then after I execute this code:
include '../../database/connect.php';
Class Calc {
function getPrice($id) {
$Db = new Db();
$sth = $Db->dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM orders WHERE id = :id");
$sth->execute(array(':id'=>$id));
$are_you_serial = $sth->fetchAll();
foreach($are_you_serial as $row) {
$serialised = $row['reply_array'];
$product_id = $row['product_id'];
$user_id = $row['user_id'];
}
$array = unserialize($serialised);
foreach($array as $row) {
echo $row[1];
}
}
}
$calc = new Calc();
$calc->getPrice(11);
eaca comes out. When I call row 0 PjAJ comes out.
When I call row 2 this seems to be the error:
rwh
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 2 in index.php on line 29
This is what the array looks like if I just print_r the $array:
Array
(
[0] => Perfect
[1] => jawel hoor
[2] => Ach jawohl joh
[3] => Ja
)
I can also call $array[0] and it'll show the right things but once I put it in the foreach it doesn't work anymore.

Answer 1

Your first foreach keeps reassigning the variables, so $serialised (should be $serialized BTW) will only ever hold the value of the last row by the time you're actually calling unserialize. I'll add what I think you want bellow, but for now, some more details on why you're getting the "weird" or unexpected output:
A little info on how to read the PHP serialized format:
a:4:{i:0;s:7:"Perfect";i:1;s:10:"jawel hoor";...
a:4:{: What follows is an array, containing 4 key-value pairs
i:0;: An integer, value 0. Because this is part of an array, all odd values are keys, even values are values, so the first index of the array is 0
s:7:"Perfect";: A string, 7 chars long, and the string itself is "Perfect" (without the quotes)
Same applies to objects that are serialized:
O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:3:"bar";i:123;s:3:"foo";i:456;}
o:8:"stdClass":2:{: An object, the class name of which is 8 chars long (stdClass), with 2 properties set
s:3:"bar";i:123;: The property name is a 3-char long string ("bar"), its value is an int (123)
s:3:"foo";i:456;: 3-char long property ("foo") with value 456
}: End of serialized object
Knowing this, you should be able to work out that what you're doing with the data after you've unserialized, ie this:
foreach ($array as $row) {
echo $row[1];
}
Is just all shades of wrong, the value of $row will be a string, and getting an index/offset of a string is possible (preferably using the {} notation, as in $row{1}), but it'll return the character at offset n, where n is the digit/key between brackets. Strings are, like arrays, zero-indexed BTW, so $string = 'foo'; echo $string{0}; will echo "f", and echo $string{1}; will echo "o".
What you want, then is to write:
foreach ($array as $row) {
echo $row;
}
or shorter:
echo implode(PHP_EOL, $array);//PHP_EOL to add linebreaks between the strings
Like I said at the beginning, you're only really processing the very last serialized value, what you actually want is probably something more like this:
$unserialized = [];
foreach ($sth->fetchAll() as $row) {
//add unserialized values to an array
$unserialized[] = unserialize($row['reply_array']);
}
//$unserialized is now an array of arrays
foreach ($unserialized as $rowNr => $array) {
echo 'Row #', $rowNr+1, ': ', PHP_EOL,
implode(PHP_EOL, $array);
}
That ought to get you started...