Question

I’m working on a website in which I would like to use PHP and MySQL.
Mostly I insert hundreds of variables into my MySQL database but I am getting tired of this.
I have searched the internet for a solution but without any succes.

My website uses Object Oriented PHP and I would like to insert the whole instance into the database.
Example:

class User
{
     private $userID;
     private $username;
     // etc

     public function __construct($userID, $username)
     {
           $this->userID = $userID;
           $this->username = $username
     }

     // Other functions go here
}

I would like to know if I could save a whole instance ($user = new User($x, $y)) into my MySQL database. If possible, what field type do I need?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You should serialize the object somehow and store it in a text field. You can use either PHP’s native serialize()/unserialize() or, if they are simple value-objects, you could use json_encode()/json_decode(). See this thread for more information/compare of the two