I've been tinkering with dumping PHP objects, and have found myself constantly running into a brick wall. The output from print_r and friends is fine in some contexts, but for larger structures, it would be nice to tidy the output up a bit and wrap it in some HTML.

His solution is to serialize the object into a string (keeping all related meta information) that can be passed around and parsed back into its original form for debugging. He's included the script that works bye taking in the string and manually parsing it back out into its parts into a useful array.

Options this time were:

• Don't use underscore in host names
• Commit your session before it redirects
• Prevent session fixation
• Don't expose session_id's

Subversion and Symfony users should cast their votes in this week's poll. It asks, of the four options given, which is your favorite "trick" to running the Symfony framework with Subversion.

PHP's support for sessions make adding "state" to your web application super easy. Bus because the illusion of state is maintained by storing a Session ID via a user's cookies, you might find yourself losing potentially productive hours chasing down bizarre client side bugs or opening up a potential security hole. Here are 4 tips to help you avoid wasting your time and securing your site.

Items on the list are:

• Don't use underscores in host names
• Commit your sessions before redirects
• Prevent session fixation (great security tip!)
• Don't expose session_id's