How best to store PHP arrays: json_encode vs serialize? Comparison and performance

Hello everyone! I'm new to PHP and trying to figure out storing arrays. I have several scripts that process data from the database, and I want to cache the results in files to avoid heavy queries every time. The problem is that I can't choose between json_encode and serialize. Both are suitable for converting an array to a string, but I don't understand the difference and which one is better to use. Here's an example of my code: ```php $data = [ 'users' => [ ['id' => 1, 'name' => 'Ivan', 'email' => 'ivan@example.com'], ['id' => 2, 'name' => 'Maria', 'email' => 'maria@example.com'], ['id' => 3, 'name' => 'Petr', 'email' => 'petr@example.com'] ], 'timestamp' => time(), 'settings' => ['theme' => 'dark', 'lang' => 'ru'] ]; ```