northern/serializer

Serializes a annotated object to a plain PHP array.

Serializer

Northern\Serializer is a small PHP library that allows you to annotate your POPO's and serialize them into a plain PHP array., _(*1)

To run the tests:, _(*2)

vendor/bin/phpunit

To generate code coverage reports:, _(*3)

vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-html ./reports

Find Northern\Serializer on Packagist, _(*4)

Installation

Install through Composer., _(*5)

"require": {
  "northern/serializer": "1.*"
}

How to use

To use Northern\Serializer you need to import it:, _(*6)

use Northern\Serializer\Serializer;

You can now instantiate and run the serializer on any PHP object:, _(*7)

$serializer = new Serializer();

$array = $serializer->toArray( $someObject );

However, without having annotated $someObject's class, nothing will be serialized. Let's annotate the class of which $someObject is an instance:, _(*8)

use Northern\Serializer\Annotation as Serialize;

class SomeClass {

  /** @Serialize\Int */
  protected $myProperty = 123;

}

We have now annotated our class and indicated that the $myProperty attribute must be serialized as an integer. When we now serialize $someObject (which is assumed to be an instance of SomeClass) the $array variable will contain the serialized data:, _(*9)

Array(
  [myProperty] => 123
)

Easy as., _(*10)

With Northern\Serializer you can also serialize methods. Usually a serialized method is a getter of some sort. Let's look at an example:, _(*11)

use Northern\Serializer\Annotation as Serialize;

class SomeClass {

  /** @Serialize\Int(name="myValue") */
  public function getMyValue()
  {
    return 123;
  }

}

As the above demonstrates, by simply adding the correct annotation to the method, the output of the method will be serialized as the key set by the annotation name parameter, which is myValue in our example:, _(*12)

Array(
  [myValue] => 123
)

If the name attribute is not specified on the annotation then the name of the method will be used as the serialization key, e.g:, _(*13)

class SomeClass {

  /** @Serialize\Bool */
  public function isValid()
  {
    return true;
  }

}

Which will produce:, _(*14)

Array(
  [isValid] => 1
)

Serializing properties and methods are of course very handy but what about a nested object? Can do too:, _(*15)

class BarClass {

    /** @Serialize\Int */
    protected $barValue = 123;

}

class FooClass {

  /** @Serialize\Object */
  protected $bar;

  public function __construct()
  {
    $this->bar = new BarClass();
  }

}

Notice the Serialize\Object annotation? Be careful with recursive references!, _(*16)

Reference

These are the available serialization types:, _(*17)