I have the following problem. I am retrieving a mysql text field that is a serialized text of a invoice. I am working in 2 different projects. Both have the same version of PHP. The data was exported & imported from db to db. If i var_dump the data from db1 it tells me it's length is x. When I do the same in from db2 i get x+2
string(595) "a:3:{s:11:"userdetails";a:20:{s:4:"name";s:3:"bas";s:8:"lastname";s:7:"schmitz";s:5:"email";s:17:"email@test.de";s:6:"street";s:11:"f�rstenwall";s:7:"street2";s:0:"";s:7:"company";s:0:"";s:3:"zip";s:5:"40215";s:9:"residence";s:10:"d�sseldorf";s:7:"country";s:7:"Germany";s:5:"phone";s:7:"3033185";s:3:"fax";s:0:"";s:10:"customerID";i:202771;s:2:"nr";s:3:"228";s:6:"region";s:3:"nrw";s:10:"phone_code";s:3:"211";s:8:"fax_code";s:0:"";s:10:"salutation";s:2:"Mr";s:5:"sales";s:0:"";s:12:"country_code";s:0:"";s:10:"vat_number";s:0:"";}s:6:"domain";s:15:"bas-schmitz2.de";s:10:"has_domain";b:1;}"
string(597) "a:3:{s:11:"userdetails";a:20:{s:4:"name";s:3:"bas";s:8:"lastname";s:7:"schmitz";s:5:"email";s:17:"email@test.de";s:6:"street";s:11:"fürstenwall";s:7:"street2";s:0:"";s:7:"company";s:0:"";s:3:"zip";s:5:"40215";s:9:"residence";s:10:"düsseldorf";s:7:"country";s:7:"Germany";s:5:"phone";s:7:"3033185";s:3:"fax";s:0:"";s:10:"customerID";i:202771;s:2:"nr";s:3:"228";s:6:"region";s:3:"nrw";s:10:"phone_code";s:3:"211";s:8:"fax_code";s:0:"";s:10:"salutation";s:2:"Mr";s:5:"sales";s:0:"";s:12:"country_code";s:0:"";s:10:"vat_number";s:0:"";}s:6:"domain";s:15:"bas-schmitz2.de";s:10:"has_domain";b:1;}"
As I am pasting these I can see that there is a difference when displaying germanic characters
Any idea to why this is happening?
The output of serialize() cannot be handled as plain text:
Return Values
Returns a string containing a byte-stream representation of value that can be stored anywhere.
Note that this is a binary string which may include null bytes, and needs to be stored and handled as such. For example, serialize() output should generally be stored in a
BLOBfield in a database, rather than aCHARorTEXTfield.
Thus your data is corrupted in the first place.
If you're unable to change the database design (which would be the proper fix), you need to re-encode serialised data in a plain text encoding such as Base64:
$encoded = base64_encode(serialize($foo));
$decoded = unserialize(base64_decode($encoded));