Contributed by Maxime Steinhausser in #39399

The Serializer component provides a mechanism to configure the way data is serialized/deserialized: the context options. These options are passed as an optional argument of the serialize/deserialize methods.

In Symfony 5.3 we've improved the serializer so you can define the context as part of the mapping information thanks to a new Serializer\Context annotation/attribute.

For example, to define how some datetime property should be formatted, use the following:

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        use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Annotation as Serializer;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\DateTimeNormalizer;

class SomeClass
{
    /**
     * @Serializer\Context({ DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY = 'Y-m-d' })
     */
    public \DateTime $date;

    // In PHP 8 applications you can use PHP attributes instead:
    #[Serializer\Context([DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => 'Y-m-d'])]
    public \DateTime $date;
}
    

The annotation/attribute supports different contexts for normalization/denormalization and it can also define serialization groups:

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        #[Serializer\Context(
    normalizationContext: [DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => 'Y-m-d'],
    denormalizationContext: [DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => \DateTime::COOKIE]
)]
public \DateTime $date;

#[Serializer\Context(
    normalizationContext: [DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => \DateTime::RFC3339],
    groups: ['extended']
)]
public \DateTime $date;
    