PHP How to extract variable from serialized mysql string?

Question

Within a php file I'm trying to extract the user_name var in this string

user_name|s:11:"testaccount";user_email|s:27:"testaccount@testaccount.com";user_login_status|i:1;

I can't figure out what formatting this is though. I am using php mysqli to query the database with this function

$q = "SELECT `data` FROM `sessions` WHERE `id` = '".$this->dbc->real_escape_string($cookie)."' LIMIT 1";

where $cookie is a cookie of the client. Does anyone recognize the format of the string?

Just a quick tip. It's *much* safer to use [parameterized queries](https://stackoverflow.com/a/4712113/365796) when working with SQL. — OdinX, May 28 '18 at 18:14
The format is new to me at least. Home brewn? Guess you by now have found out how to explode and get your value? — Teson, May 28 '18 at 18:14
That's a serialized session. The key/value pair is separated by a pipe, and the value is serialized. — jh1711, May 28 '18 at 18:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 28 '18 at 18:19

0

Name , email and status are separated by semi colon. Name and value separated by pipe. Value is in serialize form. For eg. user_name|s:11:"testaccount";

Unserialise s:11:"testaccount"; you will get testaccount value

answered May 28 '18 at 18:19

Hidden Skills

1
2

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 08 '18 at 06:03

Figured it out. Used this function to do it https://gist.github.com/phred/1201412.

//
// This is the result of about an hour's delving into PHP's hairy-ass serialization internals.
// PHP provides a session_decode function, however, it's only useful for setting the contents of
// $_SESSION.  Say, for instance, you want to decode the session strings that PHP stores in its
// session files -- session_decode gets you nowhere.
//
// There are a bunch of nasty little solutions on the manual page[1] that use pretty hairy regular
// expressions to get the job done, but I found a simple way to use PHP's unserialize and recurse
// through the string extracting all of the serialized bits along the way.
//
// It's not speedy (it calls unserialize AND serialize for each session element), but it's accurate
// because it uses PHP's internal serialized object parser.  Fun trivia: PHP's serialized object
// parser is an ugly-ass little compiled regular expression engine.  But hey, it works, let's not
// reinvent this wheel.
//
// [1]: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-decode.php
//

define("SESSION_DELIM", "|");

function unserialize_session($session_data, $start_index=0, &$dict=null) {
   isset($dict) or $dict = array();

   $name_end = strpos($session_data, SESSION_DELIM, $start_index);

   if ($name_end !== FALSE) {
       $name = substr($session_data, $start_index, $name_end - $start_index);
       $rest = substr($session_data, $name_end + 1);

       $value = unserialize($rest);      // PHP will unserialize up to "|" delimiter.
       $dict[$name] = $value;

       return unserialize_session($session_data, $name_end + 1 + strlen(serialize($value)), $dict);
   }

   return $dict;
}

$session_data = …; // A string from a PHP session store.

$session_dict = unserialize_session($session_data);

PHP How to extract variable from serialized mysql string?

2 Answers2