Pavel Shevaev has posted his method (a reliable way) for serializing and unserializing objects in your applications:

An experienced PHP developer might be wondering why posting this topic in a blog if PHP already has universal and almost transparent tools for this job [...] The key statement here is "almost transparent" which means you have to include all class definitions before invoking unserialize or use some __autoload schema.

The whole problem is due to the fact a serialized object has no idea about its class definition except the class name(the reason behind that is absolutely valid). [...] That's why I decided to hack up, hopefully, a more universal solution to this problem

His method contains things inside of a "serialization container" that automagically includes everything needed before it gets serialized. His code for the method is included as well as some examples of its use.