Object (de)normalization for PHP

A PHP language extension that provides an efficient alternative to Symfony's Normalizer.

Documentation

This extension provides a Normalizer\ObjectNormalizer class that can be used to normalize objects into arrays and denormalize arrays back into objects. The normalization process can be controlled using attributes.

Installation

To install the extension, you can use the following commands:

phpize
./configure
make
make install

Enabling the extension

You'll need to add extension=normalizer.so to your primary php.ini file.

# To see where .ini files are located
php -i | grep "\.ini"

---

You can also enable the extension temporarily using the command line:

php -d extension=normalizer.so

Usage

Here is a basic example of how to use the ObjectNormalizer:

<?php

use Normalizer\ObjectNormalizer;
use Normalizer\Expose;
use Normalizer\Groups;
use Normalizer\Ignore;
use Normalizer\MaxDepth;
use Normalizer\SerializedName;

class User
{
    #[Expose]
    #[SerializedName("user_id")]
    public int $id;

    #[Groups(["public"])]
    public string $name;

    #[Ignore]
    public string $password;

    #[Groups(["admin"])]
    public string $email;

    #[MaxDepth(1)]
    public Profile $profile;
}

class Profile
{
    #[Expose]
    public string $site;
}

$user = new User();
$user->id = 1;
$user->name = 'John Doe';
$user->password = 'secret';
$user->email = '[email protected]';
$user->profile = new Profile();
$user->profile->site = 'example.com';

$normalizer = new ObjectNormalizer();

// Normalize the object
$data = $normalizer->normalize($user, [ObjectNormalizer::GROUPS => ['public']]);

// $data will be:
// [
//     'user_id' => 1,
//     'name' => 'John Doe',
//     'profile' => [],
// ]

// Denormalize the array back to an object
$newUser = $normalizer->denormalize($data, User::class);

Features

The normalization process can be controlled with the following attributes:

#[Expose]

By default, all properties are ignored. The #[Expose] attribute marks a property to be included in the normalization.

#[Ignore]

The #[Ignore] attribute marks a property to be excluded from the normalization.

#[Groups]

The #[Groups] attribute allows you to conditionally include properties based on normalization groups. A property with a #[Groups] attribute will only be included if the group is passed to the normalize method.

class MyObj
{
    #[Groups(['group1', 'group2'])]
    public string $foo;

    #[Groups(['group4'])]
    public string $anotherProperty;

    #[Groups(['group3'])]
    public function getBar() // is* and has* methods are also supported
    {
        return $this->bar;
    }
}

$normalizer = new Normalizer\ObjectNormalizer();

$obj = new MyObj();
$obj->foo = 'foo';
$obj->anotherProperty = 'property';

$array = $normalizer->normalize($obj, [Normalizer\ObjectNormalizer::GROUPS => ['group1', 'group4']]);

// Will return ['foo' => 'foo', 'anotherProperty' => 'property]

#[MaxDepth]

The #[MaxDepth] attribute prevents the normalizer from going too deep into the object graph. When the max depth is reached, the normalizer will return an empty array.

#[SerializedName]

The #[SerializedName] attribute allows you to specify a different name for a property in the normalized output.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a pull request.

$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

Testing

make
make test

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information.