In the Classes and Objects docs, there is this: In order to be able to unserialize() an object, the class of that object needs to be defined.
Prior to PHP 5.3, this was not an issue. But after PHP 5.3 an object made by SimpleXML_Load_String() cannot be serialized. An attempt to do so will result in a run-time failure, throwing an exception. If you store such an object in $_SESSION, you will get a post-execution error that says this:
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Serialization of 'SimpleXMLElement' is not allowed' in [no active file]:0 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in [no active file] on line 0
The entire contents of the session will be lost. Hope this saves someone some time!
<?php error_reporting(E_ALL);
session_start();
var_dump($_SESSION);
$_SESSION['hello'] = 'World';
var_dump($_SESSION);
$xml = '<?xml version="1.0"?>
<families>
<parent>
<child index="1" value="Category 1">Child One</child>
</parent>
</families>';
$obj = SimpleXML_Load_String($xml);
$_SESSION['obj'] = $obj;
