Hi Michael,
The only
.ser[/m] file I could find in my DW is one generated by the epub plugin, so this response this is based on only one example. [m]serialize[/m] (and the reverse [m]unserialize) are native PHP functions which convert an arbitrary value (such as a string, array or object) into a storable string. Each line in the file is a single value, so in the case of an array the lines can be very long. See
https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php for the full details. Reading the file is quite easy in vi, other editors may be less accommodating!
For the benefit of other readers of this thread, the file I mentioned can be easily visualised by adding linefeeds and spaces thus:
a:2:{
s:32:"b015051af9addc4bcaf98035c718d631";s:30:"epub:rochester_cathedral_bells";
s:13:"current_books";a:1:{
s:32:"b015051af9addc4bcaf98035c718d631";a:2:{
s:5:"title";s:25:"Rochester Cathedral bells";
s:4:"epub";s:40:"epub:jmr:2018_september_21_01-34-45.epub";
}
}
}
Analysis
The value is a 2 element array (a:2:). In array storage, each element is represented by a
key;value;[/m] pair, so the first element has the key [m]s:32:"b015051af9addc4bcaf98035c718d631"[/m] and value [m]s:30:"epub:rochester_cathedral_bells"[/m]. These are both strings ([m]s) with a length (32 or 30) respectively. The second element has the key "current books" and is itself an array.
The next array inwards has one element with key
s:32:"b015051af9addc4bcaf98035c718d631" and the value is a two element array.
The innermost array defines strings; the title and an "epub" string giving the source file.