This project is Open Sourced based on work that we did initially as closed source at Liip, it may be lacking some documentation. We plan to add more documentation and support, including Symfony bundles in the near future. If there is anything that you need or have questions about we would love to see you open an issue! :)
This serializer can convert between JSON and PHP objects and back. It uses reflection, Phpdoc and JMS Serializer annotations to generate PHP code for the conversion. JMS serializer groups and versions are supported for serializing but not for deserializing.
If you customized JMS Serializer with your own listeners or similar things, this serializer will not work for you. We made an effort to detect when unsupported features are used and raise an error, but recommend that you double check whether the Liip Serializer really produces the exact same as JMS when transforming your data.
The Liip Serializer generates PHP code based on the PHP models that you specify. It uses the flexible liip/metadata-parser to gather metadata on the models. A separate file is generated for every version and serializer groups combination to move all logic to the code generation step. This serializer is fast even for massive object trees because the generated PHP code is very simplistic and specific to the usecase, rather than the complex, flexible callback structure that JMS serializer uses. The project we developped this for often has data with up to a megabyte of compact JSON data.
You can use the Liip Serializer stand alone. If you are already working with JMS Serializer, you can also use the drop-in replacement for JMS serializer liip/serializer-jms-adapter. The drop-in adapter implements the JMS interfaces and provides fallback to the regular JMS serializer for missing generated files and on other errors.
You need to generate converter files whenever your models change. They follow a naming scheme that allows the Liip Serializer to find them. Because the files have to be pre-generated, you need to specify the exact list of classes, serializer groups and versions you want to support.
Note: We plan to create a Symfony bundle to integrate the Liip Serializer into Symfony.
This step needs to be executed during the deployment phase and whenever your models change.
use Doctrine\Common\Annotations\AnnotationReader;
use Liip\MetadataParser\Builder;
use Liip\MetadataParser\Parser;
use Liip\MetadataParser\RecursionChecker;
use Liip\MetadataParser\ModelParser\JMSParser;
use Liip\MetadataParser\ModelParser\LiipMetadataAnnotationParser;
use Liip\MetadataParser\ModelParser\PhpDocParser;
use Liip\MetadataParser\ModelParser\ReflectionParser;
use Liip\Serializer\DeserializerGenerator;
use Liip\Serializer\Serializer;
use Liip\Serializer\SerializerGenerator;
use Liip\Serializer\Template\Deserialization;
use Liip\Serializer\Template\Serialization;
$configuration = GeneratorConfiguration::createFomArray([
'options' => [
'allow_generic_arrays' => false,
],
'default_group_combinations' => ['api'],
'default_versions' => ['', '1', '2'],
'classes' => [
Product::class => [
'default_versions' => ['1', '2'], // optional, falls back to global list
'group_combinations' => [ // optional, falls back to global default_group_combinations
[
'groups' => [], // generate without groups
],
[
'groups' => ['api'], // global groups are overwritten, not merged. versions are taken from class default
],
[
'groups' => ['api', 'detail'],
'versions' => ['2'], // only generate the combination of api and detail for version 2
],
],
],
Other::class => [], // generate this class with default groups and versions
]
]);
$parsers = [
new ReflectionParser(),
new PhpDocParser(),
new JMSParser(new AnnotationReader()),
new LiipMetadataAnnotationParser(new AnnotationReader()),
];
$builder = new Builder(new Parser($parsers), new RecursionChecker(null, []));
$serializerGenerator = new SerializerGenerator( new Serialization(), $configuration, $cacheDirectory);
$deserializerGenerator = new DeserializerGenerator(new Deserialization(), [Product::class, User::class], $cacheDirectory);
$serializerGenerator->generate($builder);
$deserializerGenerator->generate($builder);Specify global defaults for the versions to be generated, and the group combinations.
Then specify for which classes to generate the serializer and deserializer.
For each class, you can overwrite which versions to generate. If you specify no group combinations, the global default group combinations are used. If you specify group combinations, you can again overwrite the versions to generate.
Note that defaults are not merged - the most specific list is used exclusively.
To generate a file without version, specify version '' in the list of versions.
To generate a serializer without groups, specify an empty group combination [].
If you want to (de)serialize arrays with undefined content, you can do that by
setting the allow_generic_arrays value to true via the options argument.
Note: This will only work if the contents of that array are only primitive types (string, int, float, boolean and nested arrays with only these types).
In this example, we serialize an object of class Product for version 2:
use Acme\Model\Product;
use Liip\Serializer\Context;
use Liip\Serializer\Serializer;
$serializer = new Serializer($cacheDirectory);
// A model to serialize
$productModel = new Product();
// Your serialized data
$data = $serializer->serialize($productModel, 'json', (new Context())->setVersion(2));use Acme\Model\Product;
use Liip\Serializer\Serializer;
$serializer = new Serializer($cacheDirectory);
// Data to deserialize
$data = '{
"api_string": "api",
"detail_string": "details",
"nested_field": {
"nested_string": "nested"
},
"date": "2018-08-03T00:00:00+02:00",
"date_immutable": "2016-06-01T00:00:00+02:00"
}';
/** @var Product $model */
$model = $serializer->deserialize($data, Product::class, 'json');Like JMS Serializer, the Liip Serializer also provides fromArray and
toArray for working with array data. As usual when using PHP arrays for JSON
data, you will lose the distinction between empty array and empty object.
If you need help, please open an issue on github.
We started having performance problem with large object structures (often several Megabyte of JSON data). Code analysis showed that a lot of time is spent calling the JMS callback structure hundred thousands of times. Simplistic generated PHP code is much more efficient at runtime.
The DeserializerGenerator and SerializerGenerator produce PHP code from the
metadata. The generators use twig to render the PHP code, for better
readability. See the Template namespace.
The indentation in the generated code is not respecting levels of nesting. We could carry around the depth and prepend whitespace, but apart from debugging, nobody will look at the generated code.
We decided to not use reflection, for better performance. Properties need to be public or have a public getter for serialization. For deserialization, we also match constructor arguments by name, so as long as a non-public property name matches a constructor argument, it needs no setter.