Construct object during deserialization on JMS Serializer

Question

I try to load object from database (Symfony, Doctrine) during deserialization using JMS Serializer. Lets say that I have a simple football api application, two entities Team and Game, teams with id 45 and 46 are already in db.

When creating a new game from json:

{
  "teamHost": 45,
  "teamGues": 46,
  "scoreHost": 54,
  "scoreGuest": 42,

}

Game entity:

class Game {

    /**
     * @ORM\Id()
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue()
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Team")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(nullable=false)
     */
    private $teamHost;

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Team")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(nullable=false)
     */
    private $teamGuest;

I would like to create a Game object that has already loaded teams from the database.

$game = $this->serializer->deserialize($requestBody, \App\Entity\Game::class, 'json');

Looking for a solution I found something like jms_serializer.doctrine_object_constructor but there are no specific examples in the documentation. Are you able to help me with the creation of an object from the database during deserialization?

Answer 1

You need to create a custom handler: https://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer/master/handlers

A simple example:

<?php

namespace App\Serializer\Handler;


use App\Entity\Team;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use JMS\Serializer\Context;
use JMS\Serializer\GraphNavigator;
use JMS\Serializer\Handler\SubscribingHandlerInterface;
use JMS\Serializer\JsonDeserializationVisitor;

class TeamHandler implements SubscribingHandlerInterface
{
    private $em;

    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
    {
        $this->em = $em;
    }

    public static function getSubscribingMethods()
    {
        return [
            [
                'direction' => GraphNavigator::DIRECTION_DESERIALIZATION,
                'format' => 'json',
                'type' => Team::class,
                'method' => 'deserializeTeam',
            ],
        ];
    }

    public function deserializeTeam(JsonDeserializationVisitor $visitor, $id, array $type, Context $context)
    {
        return $this->em->getRepository(Team::class)->find($id);
    }
}

Altough I would recommend universal approach to handle any entity you want by a single handler.

Example: https://gist.github.com/Glifery/f035e698b5e3a99f11b5

Also, this question has been asked before: JMSSerializer deserialize entity by id