如何解析mySql表的单个字段中的多个值？

Question

I am working with a real-estate database in mySql. This is used with a wordpress site. Each property that is listed has related agents in a joined table. There may be more than 1 agent to a property. However, multiple agents are listed in a single field. (So, join is 1-1). Here is an example

a:2:{i:0;s:4:"1995";i:1;s:3:"260";}

So it appears that this is some sort of array implementation. I don't have much experience with this, as it is a bad way of storing data in a relational DB anyway. In this example, there are 2 agents. I know that:
- the first "2" probably refers to the number of agents.
- "1995" and "260" are the record-ids of the agent's record.
How would I craft a SQL statement to extract these two record ids (and find related data in the main record) from php?
If this is a cumbersome solution, I'd want to create a new SQL view to make access easier. Is this possible?
If there are any, I can't find any php functions that interprets this field.
Table redesign is not an option.

Edit:
As I was reading through the answers to a similar question as pointed out, I came to the conclusion that this is most probably impossible to do. And frankly ridiculous.
The solution entailed using the SUBSTRING_INDEX repeatedly. How many times, could vary every time. Even if the number of values is specified, it may not be possible to accomplish in MySQL. I will have to work with the limitations that this creates.

Answer 1

The data format you mention is php's serialization format . Before JSON took over the world, Rasmus Lerdorf and the php creators came up with their own way of doing it.

WordPress uses lots of this stuff.

php's unserialize() function converts it from that string representation into an appropriate php object.

If you must, you can probably use MySQL string functions like LOCATE() and SUBSTRING() to extract certain values from those serialized strings. But that will be a huge pain in the neck, and very specific to the kind of object that's serialized.