Serialized PHP Response Format

PHP has a built-in serialized data structure format, using the serialize() and unserialize() functions.

To return an API response in PHP serialized format, send a parameter "format" in the request with a value of "php_serial".

The returned data structures match the JSON response structures - please read the JSON documentation for further details.

To perform a very simple request in PHP 5, your code might look like this:

#
# build the API URL to call
#

$params = array(
	'api_key'	=> '81e7e11aeac57ac668609d316f6388ce',
	'method'	=> 'flickr.photos.getInfo',
	'photo_id'	=> '251875545',
	'format'	=> 'php_serial',
);

$encoded_params = array();

foreach ($params as $k => $v){

	$encoded_params[] = urlencode($k).'='.urlencode($v);
}


#
# call the API and decode the response
#

$url = "https://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?".implode('&', $encoded_params);

$rsp = file_get_contents($url);

$rsp_obj = unserialize($rsp);


#
# display the photo title (or an error if it failed)
#

if ($rsp_obj['stat'] == 'ok'){

	$photo_title = $rsp_obj['photo']['title']['_content'];

	echo "Title is $photo_title!";
}else{

	echo "Call failed!";
}

Examples

You can see a successful serialized PHP response here.

You can see a serialized PHP failure response here.