cakephp-plugin cakephp-serializable-behaviour

imsamurai/cakephp-serializable-behaviour

Behavior for saving and reading serialized data from/into database

API Documentation

Check out Serializable Behavior API Documentation, _(*1)

Abstract

, _(*2)

Serializable Behaviour for CakePHP 2.1+, _(*3)

Use it if you want to save and read serialized data into db., _(*4)

Installation

cd my_cake_app/app
git clone git://github.com/imsamurai/cakephp-serializable-behaviour.git Plugin/Serializable

or if you use git add as submodule:, _(*5)

cd my_cake_app
git submodule add "git://github.com/imsamurai/cakephp-serializable-behaviour.git" "app/Plugin/Serializable"

then add plugin loading in Config/bootstrap.php, _(*6)

CakePlugin::load('Serializable');

Configuration

Write global config if you need to use custom serialization function:, _(*7)

Configure::write('Serializable', array(
  'serialize' => <valid callable>,
  'unserialize' => <valid callable>
));

Attach behaviour to model:, _(*8)

public $actsAs = array(
      'Serializable.Serializable' => array(
        'fields' => <array of field names>,
        'serialize' => <valid callable>, // optional
        'unserialize' => <valid callable> // optional
        'merge' => true // optional
      )
);

By default serialization uses function serialize, unserialization - unserialize Merging is off by default, turning it on will do a recursive merge on existing records so you can add data without replacing the entire serialized object., _(*9)

Advanced usage

If you want to use serialization with Containable behaviour you must modify your AppModel. For example we have 3 models that extedned AppModel: NewsPopular has many NewsPopularItem NewsPopularItem belongs to Article, _(*10)

NewsPopularItem and Article has some serialized fields., _(*11)

Assume you want to fetch data this way:, _(*12)

$this->NewsPopular->contain(array(
        'NewsPopularItem' => array(
            'Article'
        )
    ));
$data = $this->NewsPopular->find('first');

In this case you must add some configuration to AppModel::afterFind. In basic case there must be:, _(*13)

public function afterFind($results, $primary = false) {
    if (!$primary && $this->Behaviors->enabled('Serializable')) {
        return $this->Behaviors->Serializable->afterFind($this, $results, $primary);
    }
    return parent::afterFind($results, $primary);
}

And that's all! Now you have data structure with unserialized fields., _(*14)