将数组加密为字符串

Question

I'm looking for an two-way encryption algorithm to encode an array as a string, so that I can securely store some data in a cookie. The algorithm shouldn't just implode the array, I want it to be obfuscated too. My data contains all printable characters.

A link to something would be sufficient, I just can't seem to dig anything up on Google. Maybe I should just implode the array with some obscure character, and then encrypt it somehow? I'm not sure what method to encrypt it with though... it doesn't have too secure, the cookie data isn't that sensitive.

Oh... yeah, the encryption algorithm should let me use a key/salt. mcrypt_encrypt seems to be giving back messy long results, but perhaps I'm not using the right cipher. Which is the simplest cipher (produces short clean strings)?

Answer 1

serialize() will get your information from an array to a string - and you could pass it through base64_encode() if you just want obfuscation - but not security.

If you want some security - look into mcrypt and blowfish: blowfish example

Regarding mcrypt

Warning This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 7.1.0. Relying on this function is highly discouraged.