How can I convert plain nested array to collection of entity objects? - php

Question

I have a PHP plain array which I need converted to it's original entity. Example:
class Contact
{
protected $name;
getName(){}
setName(){}
}
This gets send back and forth via an API, and at some point I have that contact as an array element:
$example = ['name'=>'Foo Bar'];
I would like that back as an Contact class. At the moment, I can do that via a serialize/deserialize, but I'm hoping there is a more efficient method for this:
foreach($examples as $example) {
$temp = $this->serializer->serialize($example, 'json');
$contact = $this->serializer->deserialize($temp, Contact::class, 'json');
}
This works, and $contact is now instance of Contact. But I have to perform this on 100 items in one go, possibly more.
I'm thinking of creating a toObject() method, which assigns the values by keys, but that doesn't seem a lot better.
Is there way to accomplish this without writing my own logic or doing the extra serializing step?
Please note: I get the data array, I cant get the 'raw' json. Please take that 'as is'.

Answer 1

Denormalizing from raw JSON input
If you are getting the information from an API, you could probably do away with the JSON conversion and deal with the input directly, since most likely the API is not sending you a native array, but a JSON you are converting to an array at some point
The Serializer component can handle arrays as well, directly.
Assuming an input JSON like this:
$data = '[
{
"name": "Mary"
},
{
"name": "Jane",
},
{
"name": "Alice"
}
]';
You could call deserialize() saying you expect Contact[] in your input data:
$contacts = $serializer->deserialize($data, Contact::class . '[]', 'json');
This would get you a Contact array in one single step.
Denormalizing from array to object
If for some reason the original input is not available or not readily unserializable and you really need to convert from an array to an object one by one, and your objects have setters like the ones you show in your question; you could simply use the GetSetMethodNormalizer (one of the normalizers than the Serializer component uses internally).
E.g.:
$contacts = [
['name' => 'Mary'],
['name' => 'Jane'],
['name' => 'Alice'],
];
$normalizer = new GetSetMethodNormalizer();
foreach($contacts as $arrayContact){
$contact = $normalizer->denormalize(Contact::class, $arrayContact);
// do something with $contact;
}