Allows easy serialization and deserialization of php objects.
Serialization is performed by attaching to a specific class scope using the Closure::bind method.
To keep things fast, reflection is only used while generating the actual serialization code.
Let's start with a class to serialize. Note that the annotations hint the serializer, and that they're required for deserializing objects.
/**
* Person
*/
class Person
{
/**
* @var string
*/
private $name;
/**
* @var Address
*/
private $address;
public function __construct($name, Address $address)
{
$this->name = (string) $name;
$this->address = $address;
}
}
/**
* Address
*/
class Address
{
/**
* @var string
*/
private $street;
public function __construct($street)
{
$this->street = (string) $street;
}
}Then we'll initialize the serializer.
$serializer = new Serializer(
new SerializerLocator(
new SerializerRegistry(),
new ObjectSerializerBuilder(
new ReflectionRegistry()
),
new ArrayCache()
)
);Now we can serialize almost any object to an array and back to an object.
$data = $serializer->serialize(new Person('Name', new Address('Street')));
var_dump($data);
// array(2) {
// 'name' =>
// string(4) "Name"
// 'address' =>
// array(1) {
// 'street' =>
// string(6) "Street"
// }
// }
$object = $serializer->deserialize('Person', $data);
var_dump($object);
// class Person#8 (2) {
// private $name =>
// string(4) "Name"
// private $address =>
// class Address#18 (1) {
// private $street =>
// string(6) "Street"
// }
// }There're some limitations to the implemented serialization method. For instance, deserializing a DateTime(Immutable) object is not possible. For this reason, specialized serializers are added. You'll need to add these to the SerializerRegistry in your application bootstrap like so:
$registry = new SerializerRegistry();
$registry->add(new DateTimeSerializer());
$registry->add(new DateTimeImmutableSerializer());
$serializer = new Serializer(
new SerializerLocator(
$registry,
new ObjectSerializerBuilder(
new ReflectionRegistry()
),
new ArrayCache()
)
);The library provides two methods of caching: array and file. The array cache is primarily useful for testing/development purposes. For production however, you're better off using the FileCache.
The file cache actually writes the generated serialization code to plain php files for later use.
Below is how you'd bootstrap the file cache for the serializer:
use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem;
$serializer = new Serializer(
new SerializerLocator(
$registry,
new ObjectSerializerBuilder(
new ReflectionRegistry()
),
new FileCache(new Filesystem(), '/path/to/cache/directory')
)
);