The default encoding for HTML_AJAX is JSON (in both directions).

If your using JPSpan with the default XML serializer or HTML_AJAX with JSON you’ll be able to transparently move JavaScript datatypes to PHP ones and vice versus.

Minus any bugs you hit of course, but both have worked well for me. Also im the author of HTML_AJAX, just to be clear, but its goals is to support everything JPSpan does plus more while being lighter weight and faster.

It adds structure to POSTDATA which normally without JPSpan or serialize functions, isn’t structured.

So with this functionality in mind, are you still recommending HTML_AJAX? (Haven’t quite looked at it yet…)

As far as I can tell you one of the few people using the PHP serialzer in JPSpan, I wouldn’t really recommend using it, since its format includes string sizes its always going to be really brittle when generated from other languages.

Also it can be used to create an instance of any class thats already been included which can be a security risk. If you really want the added performance this gives you I would recommend writing your own version of unserialize that won’t create new objects or only creates ones on a whitelist. You could also cover this bug in that case.

You might also want to have a look at HTML_AJAX, which uses JSON by default in both directions.

That was a quick reply

Well, in my Smarty (http://smarty.php.net) templates, I’ve defined following in the -section of my HTML-output:

{php}
require_once ‘JPSpan.php’;
require_once JPSPAN . ‘Include.php’;
JPSpan_Include_Register(’util/data.js’);
JPSpan_Include_Register(’encode/php.js’);
{/php}

{php}
JPSpan_Includes_Display();
{/php}

And then I am calling this function to serialize the POST-values and send the serialized string to a php-page:

function postForm() {

var Encoder = new JPSpan_Encode_PHP();
var data = new Array();
var serialized_string;

data["textfield"] = document.getElementById(’textfield’).value;
serialized_string = Encoder.encode(data);

alert(serialized_string);

document.serialize.data.value = serialized_string;
document.serialize.submit();

}

” method=”post”>

” method=”post”>

Now in FireFox I get this when I POST an ENTER in my TEXTAREA:
HTTP_POST String:
a:1:{s:9:”textfield”;s:1:”
“;}

Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 27 of 31 bytes in c:\htdocs\temp\serialize_bleeding_edge.php on line 15

As you see, FireFox counts this enter only as 1 character.
It also goes wrong when I’m using Debian Testing as my PHP-enabled webserver.

Patrick

Any chance future functionality might allow the postoffice too only output server specific javascript?