I'm wondering if it is actually good practise to store Arrays in the database ? I tend to use json_encode
rather than serialize
, but was just wondering if it is a good idea. If not, then I can make some small changes and just implode the array with a comma.
No, it's a terrible practice. Please refrain from inserting CSV, JSON*, serialize()
or ANY kind of serialized data in a relational database. Denormalization is almost always a bad idea - don't do it unless you really know what you are doing, or you'll start asking
questions like: this, this, this, this, ...
Doing that, you lose or it severely hinders your ability to:
JOIN
s.It may sound pedantic, but seeing people do this is one of my pet peeves - especially in light of the plethora of questions asked on SO that would be avoided if they did the right way.
Here's the right way to do one-to-many and many-to-many relationships in an RDBMS.
*Although some SQL databases have built-in support for JSON, it's often better to restructure your data so that you don't need this