Trouble with serialize call in amfphp module using ridiculous amounts of memory.

We were having trouble with memory usage.. finally only 700mb of memory for php would fix it. Yikes!

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 785555 bytes) in /srv/www/vhosts/hockeystars.randomlink.com/httpdocs/sites/all/modules/amfphp/amfphp.module on line 90

It seems the issue is with the call to the serialize function, apparently when used with a complex array like what can often happen with this module, serialize uses a ridiculous amount of memory.

Discovered this article: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39736

When we replaced the call to serialize with a new version of the function defined in the article memory usage is minimal again.

function my_serialize( &$data, $buf = "" )
{
if( is_array( &$data ))
{
$buf .= "a:" . count( &$data ) . ":{";
foreach( $data as $key => &$value )
{
$buf .= serialize( $key ) . my_serialize( &$value );
}
$buf .= "}";
return $buf;
}
else
{
return $buf . serialize( &$data );
}
}