Best way to serialize an object

[eluser]skattabrain[/eluser]
[quote author="The Hamburgler" date="1214518164"]Thanks,
I think I'm gonna try number 3 as there's a lot of customizable data for each product and it seems a waste to store them in a database until i know they are going to be purchased.[/quote]

have you considered that someday you might want to try to salvage the sales? I'm sure you've been to site, added some items to the cart and then left ... then a time later you get emails from the store asking if you want to proceed with the order and "here is 10% off" at the same time? we do that a lot ... you'd be surprised how often it turns into sales.

you might also want to query the database to see what people are interested in as well. i'd say add it to the database.