New in Symfony 6.4: Class-based Serializer Contexts

Contributed by
Mathias Arlaud
in #51476.

The serializer context controls the serialization and deserialization of resources. This context is passed to all normalizers and can be used for example to set the date/time format, how to represent empty objects and arrays, etc.

In Symfony you can define that context in multiple ways: as a PHP array passed to serialize() and deserialize() methods, as a framework.serializer.default_context global configuration option and via the #[Context] attribute on class properties.

In Symfony 6.4 we're introducing a new way of setting the serializer context: using the #[Context] attribute on the class itself:

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namespace App\Model;

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

#[Context([DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => \DateTime::RFC3339])]
#[Context(
    context: [DateTimeNormalizer::FORMAT_KEY => \DateTime::RFC3339_EXTENDED],
    groups: ['extended'],
)]
class Person
{
    // ...
}

The class-based #[Context] attribute is applied to all properties of the class, which can override that configuration with their own #[Context] attributes. This new feature will improve DX (developer experience) when working with the Serializer component and will make you more productive by avoiding repetition.