Zend_Serializer adapters create a bridge for different methods of serializing with very little effort. Every adapter has different pros and cons. In some cases, not every PHP datatype (e.g., objects) can be converted to a string representation. In most such cases, the type will be converted to a similar type that is serializable -- as an example, PHP objects will often be cast to arrays. If this fails, a Zend_Serializer_Exception will be thrown. Below is a list of available adapters. This adapter uses the built-in un/serialize PHP functions, and is a good default adapter choice. There are no configurable options for this adapter. Igbinary is Open Source Software released by Sulake Dynamoid Oy. It's a drop-in replacement for the standard PHP serializer. Instead of time and space consuming textual representation, igbinary stores PHP data structures in a compact binary form. Savings are significant when using memcached or similar memory based storages for serialized data. You need the igbinary PHP extension installed on your system in order to use this adapter. There adapter takes no configuration options. WDDX (Web Distributed Data eXchange) is a programming-language-, platform-, and transport-neutral data interchange mechanism for passing data between different environments and different computers. The adapter simply uses the wddx_*() PHP functions. Please read the PHP manual to determine how you may enable them in your PHP installation. Additionally, the SimpleXML PHP extension is used to check if a returned NULL value from wddx_unserialize() is based on a serialized NULL or on invalid data. Available options include: Option Data Type Default Value Description comment string An optional comment that appears in the packet header. The JSON adapter provides a bridge to the Zend_Json component and/or ext/json. Please read the Zend_Json documentation for further information. Available options include: Option Data Type Default Value Description cycleCheck boolean false See this section objectDecodeType Zend_Json::TYPE_* Zend_Json::TYPE_ARRAY See this section enableJsonExprFinder boolean false See this section The AMF adapters, Zend_Serializer_Adapter_Amf0 and Zend_Serializer_Adapter_Amf3, provide a bridge to the serializer of the Zend_Amf component. Please read the Zend_Amf documentation for further information. There are no options for these adapters. This adapter converts PHP types to a Python Pickle string representation. With it, you can read the serialized data with Python and read Pickled data of Python with PHP. Available options include: Option Data Type Default Value Description protocol integer (0 | 1 | 2 | 3) 0 The Pickle protocol version used on serialize Datatype merging (PHP to Python) occurs as follows: PHP Type Python Type NULL None boolean boolean integer integer float float string string array list associative array dictionary object dictionary Datatype merging (Python to PHP) occurs per the following: Python-Type PHP-Type None NULL boolean boolean integer integer long integer | float | string | Zend_Serializer_Exception float float string string bytes string Unicode string UTF-8 string list array tuple array dictionary associative array All other types Zend_Serializer_Exception This adapter generates a parsable PHP code representation using var_export(). On restoring, the data will be executed using eval. There are no configuration options for this adapter. Objects will be serialized using the __set_state magic method. If the class doesn't implement this method, a fatal error will occur during execution. The PhpCode adapter utilizes eval() to unserialize. This introduces both a performance and potential security issue as a new process will be executed. Typically, you should use the PhpSerialize adapter unless you require human-readability of the serialized data.