MySQL Session Data Changes in CI V3

Hello,

In CI V2 user session data was stored in MySQL as a TEXT type that was encoded by PHP's serialize().

In CI V3 user session data is now stored in MySQL as a BLOB type and the data is encoded in a
serialize()-like manner, but isn't quite serialize() data. Here is an example:

Code:

__ci_last_regenerate|i:1426712200;user_id|s:1:"1";user_email|s:22:"[email protected]";user_admin|i:1;user_auth|b:1;

I'm trying to connect to MySQL directly, read in that data, and convert it back into PHP values. Any suggestions for how I can parse this data in CI V3? I've tried to hunt down how CI is encoding this data, but can't seem to find it in the library.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Note: I know it sounds crazy that I am trying to read in and parse session data directly but I assure you it's for a good reason.