What is the best practice for storing and retrieving additional user data, such as birthdate, in PHP sessions?

When storing additional user data like birthdate in PHP sessions, it is best practice to serialize the data before storing it in the session to prevent data loss or corruption. When retrieving the data, you should unserialize it to access the original data structure.

// Storing additional user data in PHP session
$userData = ['birthdate' => '1990-01-01'];
$_SESSION['userData'] = serialize($userData);

// Retrieving additional user data from PHP session
$userData = unserialize($_SESSION['userData']);
$birthdate = $userData['birthdate'];