VarExporter Component

The VarExporter component allows exporting any serializable PHP data structure to
plain PHP code. While doing so, it preserves all the semantics associated with
the serialization mechanism of PHP (__wakeup, __sleep, Serializable,
__serialize, __unserialize).

It also provides an instantiator that allows creating and populating objects
without calling their constructor nor any other methods.

The reason to use this component vs serialize() or
igbinary is performance: thanks to
OPcache, the resulting code is significantly faster and more memory efficient
than using unserialize() or igbinary_unserialize().

Unlike var_export(), this works on any serializable PHP value.

It also provides a few improvements over var_export()/serialize():

• the output is PSR-2 compatible;
• the output can be re-indented without messing up with \r or \n in the data
• missing classes throw a ClassNotFoundException instead of being unserialized to
  PHP_Incomplete_Class objects;
• references involving SplObjectStorage, ArrayObject or ArrayIterator
  instances are preserved;
• Reflection*, IteratorIterator and RecursiveIteratorIterator classes
  throw an exception when being serialized (their unserialized version is broken
  anyway, see https://bugs.php.net/76737).

Resources

• Documentation
• Contributing
• Report issues and
  send Pull Requests
  in the main Symfony repository