The Serializer Component

The Serializer Component is meant to be used to turn objects into a specific format (XML, JSON, Yaml, ...) and the other way around.

In order to do so, the Serializer Component follows the following simple schema.

As you can see in the picture above, an array is used as a man in the middle. This way, Encoders will only deal with turning specific formats into arrays and vice versa. The same way, Normalizers will deal with turning specific objects into arrays and vice versa.

Serialization is a complicated topic, and while this component may not work in all cases, it can be a useful tool while developing tools to serialize and deserialize your objects.

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use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Serializer;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\XmlEncoder;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\JsonEncoder;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\GetSetMethodNormalizer;

$encoders = array('xml' => new XmlEncoder(), 'json' => new JsonEncoder());
$normalizers = array(new GetSetMethodNormalizer());

$serializer = new Serializer($normalizers, $encoders);

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namespace Acme;

class Person
{
    private $age;
    private $name;

    // Getters
    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    public function getAge()
    {
        return $this->age;
    }

    // Setters
    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function setAge($age)
    {
        $this->age = $age;
    }
}

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$person = new Acme\Person();
$person->setName('foo');
$person->setAge(99);

$jsonContent = $serializer->serialize($person, 'json');

// $jsonContent contains {"name":"foo","age":99}

echo $jsonContent; // or return it in a Response

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$data = <<<EOF
<person>
    <name>foo</name>
    <age>99</age>
</person>
EOF;

$person = $serializer->deserialize($data,'Acme\Person','xml');