Question

I’m working directly through the Drupal database since views don’t have what I’m looking for and I came across Drupals way of storing data. It gives me this block

a:6:{s:5:"label";s:4:"Body";s:6:"widget";a:4:{s:4:"type";s:26:"text_textarea_with_summary";s:8:"settings";a:2:{s:4:"rows";i:20;s:12:"summary_rows";i:5;}s:6:"weight";i:-4;s:6:"module";s:4:"text";}s:8:"settings";a:3:{s:15:"display_summary";b:1;s:15:"text_processing";i:1;s:18:"user_register_form";b:0;}s:7:"display";a:2:{s:7:"default";a:5:{s:5:"label";s:6:"hidden";s:4:"type";s:12:"text_default";s:8:"settings";a:0:{}s:6:"module";s:4:"text";s:6:"weight";i:0;}s:6:"teaser";a:5:{s:5:"label";s:6:"hidden";s:4:"type";s:23:"text_summary_or_trimmed";s:8:"settings";a:1:{s:11:"trim_length";i:600;}s:6:"module";s:4:"text";s:6:"weight";i:0;}}s:8:"required";b:0;s:11:"description";s:0:"";}

If someone could help shed some light on what the first ‘6’ represents in the begining a:6:{... and if there’s a conventional way to parse this information or query for it.

Answer 1

This is a PHP serialized value. The “a:6” at the beginning indicates it contains an array of six elements. To parse the data, just do this:

$data = unserialize("thatlongstring");
print_r($data);