Symfony serializer returns string instead of float

Question

How can the Symfony Serializer Component be configured to normalize a float property of an object (entity)?

In detail: the taxRate property of a doctrine entity is is mapped to a PHP float value. And I would like to respond from a controller with a JSON representation like:

{taxRate:0.19}

But what I get is

{taxRate:"0.19"}

The definition of the entity's property and annotations are:

class ExampleEntity {
  /**
   * @ORM\Column(type="decimal", precision=3, scale=2, nullable=true)
   * @Groups({"api"})
   */
  protected $taxRate;
}

The controller looks like this:

$serializer = $this->get('serializer');
return new JsonResponse(
  $serializer->normalize(
    $exampleEntity,
    'json',
    [
      'groups' => 'api',
    ]
  )
);

I don't like the solution of converting the string into a Float on the JavaScript side. My app would like to assert the property is NULL or a Float value.

How can this be done?

Answer 1

Thanks to the comments, I think the question is not very clear/can be removed.

The serialization process is fine, it's the mapping from Doctrine which I did not get right.

It is totally OK, DECIMAL Doctrine/MySQL types are mapped to PHP strings. DECIMAL is designed to guarantee a precision for a numeric value. PHP's float type cannot guarantee the same precision.