Date: 2018mar31 Language: php Keywords: disk,persistence,store,restore,state Q. PHP: how can I save (persist) an object to a file? A. Use serialize() and unserialize() like this.

function serializeToFile(object &$a, string $out_file_final): void { if (!file_put_contents($out_file_tmp, serialize($a))) { print "Could not save to $out_file_tmp\n"; return; } if (file_exists($out_file_final)) { copy($out_file_final, "$out_file_final.old"); # Ignore error } if (!rename($out_file_tmp, $out_file_final)) { print "Could not rename to $out_file_final\n"; return; } print "Save to $out_file_final ok\n"; } function unserializeFromFile(string $serial_file): string { if (($ser = file_get_contents($serial_file)) == false) return false; return unserialize($ser); }

Its fast and I like that the serialized format is human-friendly text.