#1275 Comfortable editing of serialize()'d data
When storing objects into it's database, the CMS Drupal first stores each value for which a column exists into the corresponding column and uses the serialize() function to store the remaining ones into a single, additional LONGTEXT column. (I expect other frameworks to behave similarly.)
Editing such a field by hand is quite painful, as one has to keep track of character counts, syntax, etc. I'd appreciate having a more comfortable way to edit them.
I wrote a Javascript to demonstrate what I'm thinking of and tested it in both FF 3.5 and Chromium. I guess a PHP-only implementation would be more robust, since it can use PHP's native serialize() implementation. Also, my current version does not allow insertion/deletion of fields. I'll attach it as-is (needs to be included into tbl_change.php) and as a patch against Commit da6cf1b878401b3f509c9294d46864b0d6bd82dd. To test it, edit a row which contains a longtext field which contains JSON or serialize()'d data. A link "Edit serialized data" should appear below the textfield, opening a JQuery-dialog field when clicked upon.
Patch against commit da6cf1b878401b3f509c9294d46864b0d6bd82dd
The problem with serialized data is that they can contain object with __wakeup calls, so it's unsafe to do this in PHP using native unserialize() function. With own implementation it is possible to workaround this, but I don't see much difference making it in javascript or PHP.
The patch seems to be okay, but we're currently in strings/feature freeze for 3.4, so it can be merged afterwards (or look for PHP based solution).
I updated serialized.js (ONLY that file, I did not update the patch) to account for the incompleteness of my implementation: There are actually two more types of serialized data types in PHP, for which I have now implemented meaningful error messages.
If you'd serialize
$a->foo = "bar";
$a->bar = &$a->foo;
You'd get
O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:3:"foo";s:3:"bar";s:3:"bar";R:2;}
Support for both types could be added in the future. Right now the script won't offer editing of fields containing them.
js/serialized.js
Comfortable editing of json would be great. It is a well-documented standard.
Personally, I would have no use for editing "serialize" data, as I have control over my own apps and have long ago switched them to use json for storing structured data in a LONGTEXT column.
JSON editor added with https://github.com/phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin/commit/3d3c672545d1c5f58d13741d01b87d99976bbf6b