[wataru]

I'm trying to save some data to disk as a cache so it doesn't get calculated on every page view. I used to export flat HTML, but I'd like to output just the data structures instead. I used var_export to save it, but when I read the data in I get a parse error (unexpected T_CLASS).

What I'm outputting is an object of a class "Table" that I created. One of the variables of a Table is $rows, which is an array that holds objects of class "Row." The parse error I mentioned above specifies the first line in the file where a Row object is defined. It looks like this:

Code:
class Table {
  public $headers = blah;
  public $rows = 
  array (
    0 => 
    class Row {
      public $cells = blah;
    }
  )
}

Is this not legal? I thought the whole point of var_export was that the output was valid PHP, but if nesting objects like this is illegal I wish it would have told me during the export, not upon parsing the output.

[Simon Mundy]

The way you've written the code is certainly illegal, because you can't have a class definition as an array element.

Perhaps something more along the lines of...

[php]
class table
{
public $header = 'Blah';
public $rows;

function __construct()
{
$this->rows = array(
array(0=>'Data1',1=>'Data2',etc...),
array(0=>'Data1',1=>'Data2',etc...),
);
}
}
[/php]

is what you're after?

Why not save it as XML instead - the simpleXML object is very inexpensive processor/timewise and you have your data in a more accessible format. Just a thought!

Good luck

[wataru]

The problem is that it's not me that made that code. PHP is making that code with the var_export function. It's too bad var_export is allowed to do illegal things like that. I guess I'll have to try something else. Thanks for the XML suggestion.

[Simon Mundy]

Originally Posted by wataru

The problem is that it's not me that made that code. PHP is making that code with the var_export function. It's too bad var_export is allowed to do illegal things like that. I guess I'll have to try something else. Thanks for the XML suggestion.

http://php.planetmirror.com/manual/e...var-export.php

Note: Variables of type resource and arrays or objects containing objects couldn't be exported by this function.

WHat you could try, though is:-

http://php.planetmirror.com/manual/e....serialize.php

[wataru]

I had looked at the var_export manual a couple times, but only noticed the warning about objects-inside-objects just now. Thanks.

I was looking for serialize but I couldn't remember what it was called. I'll see what I can do with that. Thanks again.

[madmacgames]

yeah go with serialize... I've never really used var_export myself, but I have never had any trouble with serializing / unserializing any sort of PHP data types (objects, arrays, strings... whatever... it will handle them all)

[Peder Rice]

Serializing is also the proper term, and was adapted from Java et al for the conversion of objects to XML data.