trismegiste/mikromongo

Freeze your objects to zero kelvin

ZeroKelvin

Yet another object serializer except this one can deal with recursion, _(*1)

What

It is an object serializer/unserializer. There are many, but this one can : * deal with internal php object * deal with recursion (I mean a pointer to an object, embedded in another place) * extract private properties of a parent class * create an object no matter the constructor is * Absolutly no contraints on how objects are designed, _(*2)

Examples

Object to arrays

$transform = new \Trismegiste\ZeroKelvin\Transformer(new \Trismegiste\ZeroKelvin\UuidFactory());
$product = new LightSaber('red');
$product->setOwner(new Owner('vader'));
$dump = $transform->toArray($product);
print_r($dump);
// ouputs 
[
    [
        '@classname' => 'tests\\functional\\LightSaber',
        'owner' => [ '@ref' => 'dc969571-bf05-420f-a466-1d971dbd9c7b'],
        '@uuid' => '5b0294f7-65dd-4b17-bcbf-cd1923983649',
        'color' => 'red'
    ],
    [
        '@classname' => 'tests\\functional\\Owner',
        '@uuid' => 'dc969571-bf05-420f-a466-1d971dbd9c7b',
        'name' => 'vader'
    ]
]

Arrays to object

$transform = new \Trismegiste\ZeroKelvin\Transformer(new \Trismegiste\ZeroKelvin\UuidFactory());
$dump = [
    [
        '@classname' => 'tests\\functional\\LightSaber',
        'owner' => [ '@ref' => 'dc969571-bf05-420f-a466-1d971dbd9c7b'],
        '@uuid' => '5b0294f7-65dd-4b17-bcbf-cd1923983649',
        'color' => 'red'
    ],
    [
        '@classname' => 'tests\\functional\\Owner',
        '@uuid' => 'dc969571-bf05-420f-a466-1d971dbd9c7b',
        'name' => 'vader'
    ]
];
$product = $transform->fromArray($dump);
print_r($product);
// ouputs
tests\functional\LightSaber Object
(
    [color:protected] => red
    [owner:protected] => tests\functional\Owner Object
        (
            [name:protected] => vader
        )
)

See the [full test][1], _(*3)

How

Based on php serialization. Serialize() and unserialize() are the only magic functions that could come up with recursion AND hidden properties declared as private in a parent class. Var_dump cannot deal with recursion, var_export cannot export SplObjectStorage and using reflection to recursively introspect parent classes of an object is a pain in the ass., _(*4)

So I came up with this lib. Later, I have added a repository service to store those dumps into MongoDb., _(*5)

Why

It was a foolish attempt to make an ODM for MongoDb but I think it is unwise to use it for that purpose : * there is too much noise into objects * this is damn slow * no real error handling if objects would be updated in database * queries should be awful * updates are not possible, _(*6)

Anyway, this lib could be useful for tests and debug, fast prototyping, simple app in CLI or some specific use cases like an asynchronous event queue. I have to mention that entity loading from MongoDb are made in only two passes even with complex tree structures with high depth., _(*7)

Extending this lib

You can easily change the field name and the generation of primary keys by implementing UniqueGenerator interface., _(*8)

You also can add your own repository (for XML files, CouchDB...) by implementing RepositoryInterface, _(*9)

What this library cannot do ?

This lib cannot handle references on scalar and array. It should be possible but the dumped array would carry too much noise (index, foreign key...) to be really useful., _(*10)

This lib also cannot store properly custom serialization (implementation of the Serializable php interface). Anyway those objects are stored "as is" so you can restore them without problem., _(*11)