As evidence, the return value of serialize(’”"‘) is: ’s:2:”"”";’

Anyway, I’ve dealt with serialization a LOT (especially for pseudoRPC systems, I pass serialized objects to PHP (as JSON support won’t be widespread until PHP5 gains dominance, and an interpreted JSON decoder is too much of a performance hit), and pass JSON object back to Javascript (as a JSON encoder is a lot less insensive than a JSON decoder). So, I’ve got a nicely stable PHP serializer. I deal with the UTF problem by converting all non-ascii to HTML Entities. Not the best way, but since I RPC strings mainly for text for websites, it’s speedier than trying to figure out how many bytes a UTF symbol occupies.

Enough talk now. Here’s the code:
Object.toPHP = function(object) { var type = typeof object; switch (type) { case 'undefined': case 'unknown': return 'N;'; } if (object === null) return 'N;'; if (object.toPHP) return object.toPHP(); if (Object.isElement(object)) return null; var ret = []; for (var property in object) { var value = Object.toPHP(object[property]); if (value !== undefined) ret.push(property.toString().toPHP() + value); } return 'a:'+ret.length+':{'+ ret.join('')+'}'; } Date.prototype.toPHP = function() { return 'i:'+this.getTime()+';'; } Object.extend(String.prototype,{ toPHP: function () { var s=this.escapeUTF(); return 's:'+s.length+':"'+s+'";'; }, escapeUTF: function () { var charCode,ret = ''; for (i=0; i=32))? this.charAt(i): ('&#x' + charCode.toString(16).toUpperCase() + ';'); } return ret; } }); Array.prototype.toPHP = function () { var ret=[]; this.each(function (v,i) { ret.push(i.toPHP()+(!!v.toPHP?v.toPHP():Object.toPHP(v))); }); return 'a:'+ret.length+':{'+ret.join('')+'}'; }; Number.prototype.toPHP = function () { return (parseInt(this)==parseFloat(this)?'i':'d')+':'+this.toString()+';'; }; Boolean.prototype.toPHP = function () { return 'b:'+(this?'1':'0')+';'; }; Function.prototype.toPHP = function () { return 'N;'; };

Here is a best PHP serialize/unserialize implementation for javascript.

It can serialize/unserialize N,b,i,d,s,U,r,R,a,O,C.

It is included in PHPRPC: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=163368

PHP does that somehow, then why JS can not?

because it’s a strange features of PHP and PHP only … that use something like sizeof(*string) and not strlen(*string) that should count chars and not bytes used.

Maybe on PHP6 and Unicode native support, this problem will disappear ? … I hope so :-)

I hope it’s enought for UTF8 encoded interaction, not fast as iso, but efficent, isn’t it ?

Well, yes
Just hoped to find even faster and optimized solution. After all - PHP does that somehow, then why JS can not? :-)

Well, I’ve created this javascript class for ajax / php “real-time” interaction (search AJSHP Project on Google if you’re interested), then bytes loaded or sent should be less and not more than an XML interaction (then faster than XML) :-)

However this version, with multibytes conversion enabled, should be usable with 100 or more serialized strings inside an array, then I hope it’s enought for UTF8 encoded interaction, not fast as iso, but efficent, isn’t it ?

See you :-)

Best regards and thank you again for debug.