Basic Usage

Serializing adapters can either be created from the provided Laminas\Serializer\AdapterPluginManager#build method, or by instantiating one of the Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\* classes.

use Laminas\Serializer\Adapter;
use Laminas\Serializer\AdapterPluginManager;
use Laminas\Serializer\Exception;
use Laminas\Serializer\Serializer;

$plugins = new AdapterPluginManager();

// Via plugin manager:
$serializer = $plugins->build(Adapter\PhpSerialize::class);

// Alternately:
$serializer = new Adapter\PhpSerialize();

// Now $serializer is an instance of Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\AdapterInterface,
// specifically Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\PhpSerialize

try {
    $serialized = $serializer->serialize($data);
    // now $serialized is a string

    $unserialized = $serializer->unserialize($serialized);
    // now $data == $unserialized
} catch (Exception\ExceptionInterface $e) {
    echo $e;
}

The method AdapterInterface#serialize generates a storable string. To regenerate this serialized data, call the method AdapterInterface#unserialize.

Any time an error is encountered serializing or unserializing, the adapter will throw a Laminas\Serializer\Exception\ExceptionInterface.

Configuration Options

To configure a serializer adapter, you can optionally use an instance of Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\AdapterOptions, an instance of one of the adapter specific options class, an array, or a Traversable object. The adapter will convert it into the adapter specific options class instance (if present) or into the basic Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\AdapterOptions class instance.

Options can be passed as the second argument to the provided via the adapter's setOptions method, or as constructor arguments when directly instantiating an adapter.

Available Methods

Each serializer implements the interface Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\AdapterInterface.

This interface defines the following methods:

Project Defaults

To configure a default serializer (other than PhpSerializer, which is already pre-configured), you can override the dependency configuration in your project by implementing the following file config/autoload/laminas-serializer.global.php:

use Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\AdapterInterface;
use Laminas\Serializer\Adapter\Json;
use Laminas\Serializer\GenericSerializerFactory;

// Adapter options can hold adapter specific options, please refer to the adapter configuration documentation section 
$adapterOptions = ['cycle_check' => true];

return [
    // mezzio projects
    'dependencies' => [
        'factories' => [
            AdapterInterface::class => new GenericSerializerFactory(Json::class, $adapterOptions),                
        ],
    ],
    // laminas-mvc projects
    'service_manager' => [
        'factories' => [
            AdapterInterface::class => new GenericSerializerFactory(Json::class, $adapterOptions),
        ],
    ],
];

INFO: Defaults for PHP Serializer The PHP serializer does not have any defaults configured. If you want to modify the options of the PhpSerializer default, you will have to provide the config as shown above but with the PhpSerializer class and the options you want to use.