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copied!<p>Depends on your priorities.</p> <p>If performance is your absolute driving characteristic, then by all means use the fastest one. Just make sure you have a full understanding of the differences before you make a choice</p> <ul> <li>Unlike <code>serialize()</code> you need to add extra parameter to keep UTF-8 characters untouched: <code>json_encode($array, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE)</code> (otherwise it converts UTF-8 characters to Unicode escape sequences).</li> <li>JSON will have no memory of what the object's original class was (they are always restored as instances of stdClass).</li> <li>You can't leverage <code>__sleep()</code> and <code>__wakeup()</code> with JSON</li> <li>By default, only public properties are serialized with JSON. (in <code>PHP>=5.4</code> you can implement <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/class.jsonserializable.php" rel="noreferrer">JsonSerializable</a> to change this behavior).</li> <li>JSON is more portable</li> </ul> <p>And there's probably a few other differences I can't think of at the moment.</p> <p>A simple speed test to compare the two</p> <pre><code><?php ini_set('display_errors', 1); error_reporting(E_ALL); // Make a big, honkin test array // You may need to adjust this depth to avoid memory limit errors $testArray = fillArray(0, 5); // Time json encoding $start = microtime(true); json_encode($testArray); $jsonTime = microtime(true) - $start; echo "JSON encoded in $jsonTime seconds\n"; // Time serialization $start = microtime(true); serialize($testArray); $serializeTime = microtime(true) - $start; echo "PHP serialized in $serializeTime seconds\n"; // Compare them if ($jsonTime < $serializeTime) { printf("json_encode() was roughly %01.2f%% faster than serialize()\n", ($serializeTime / $jsonTime - 1) * 100); } else if ($serializeTime < $jsonTime ) { printf("serialize() was roughly %01.2f%% faster than json_encode()\n", ($jsonTime / $serializeTime - 1) * 100); } else { echo "Impossible!\n"; } function fillArray( $depth, $max ) { static $seed; if (is_null($seed)) { $seed = array('a', 2, 'c', 4, 'e', 6, 'g', 8, 'i', 10); } if ($depth < $max) { $node = array(); foreach ($seed as $key) { $node[$key] = fillArray($depth + 1, $max); } return $node; } return 'empty'; } </code></pre>

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