Symfony Serializer component: Deserialize array of objects of mixed types

Question

I would like to know if there is a method to deserialize an array containing objects of different types. I built something where I can serialize and deserialize an array of objects of a specific type like this:

$nodes = [
    new PostNode(),
    new PostNode(),
    new PostNode()
];

$serializer = new Serializer( [
    new ObjectNormalizer(),
    new ArrayDenormalizer(),
], [ new JsonEncoder() ] ); 

$data = $serializer->serialize($nodes, 'json');

$deSerializedNodes = $serializer->deserialize( $data, PostNode::class . '[]', 'json' );

I get exactly the array back that I inserted so that is good. Now I want to know if I can serialize and deserialize an array like this:

$nodes = [
    new PostNode(),
    new PostNode(),
    new PostNode(),
    new FormNode(),
    new FormNode()
];

Answer 1

You can only serialize an array of multiple object types as following:

$serializer = new Serializer([new GetSetMethodNormalizer(), new ArrayDenormalizer()], [new JsonEncoder()]);

$array = [new Foo('Radhi'), new Bar(26)];

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

but for deserializing an array of different object types, it's not clear for the serializer, especially for objects that have the same getters/setters method names, so I think you need to do some additional configuration for that specific use case.

Check Serializing Interfaces and Abstract Classes for more details.