Unserialize PHP Session in Python

gistfile1.py

def unserialize_session(val):
    if not val:
        return
    session = {}
    groups = re.split("([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)\|", val)
    if len(groups) > 2:
        groups = groups[1:]
        groups = map(None, *([iter(groups)] * 2))
    
        for i in range(len(groups)):
            session[groups[i][0]] = phpserialize.loads(groups[i][1])
    return session

Works using python3:

def unserialize_session(val):
    def f(*x): return x
    if not val:
        return
    session = {}
    groups = re.split(b"([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)\|", val)
    if len(groups) > 2:
        groups = groups[1:]
        groups = map(f, *([iter(groups)] * 2))

        for x in groups:
            session[x[0]] = phpserialize.loads(x[1]) #if you want to access the values using strings you need to use session[x[0].decode('ascii')] = ...
    return session

Why not just use zip?

       groups = zip(*([iter(groups)] * 2))

    for key, php_value in groups:
        session[key] = phpserialize.loads(php_value)