Fast serialization library

Serializes and deserializes complex data structures to and from json. Ideas taken from Symfony's Serializer component, Serde and others.

Symfony serializer was very flexible, but also very slow. This library tries to be as fast as possible.

Supports modern PHP projects with fully typed properties. Older codebases with no types would not work.

Fast serialization library

Installation

composer require vuryss/serializer

Features

Serialization

Properties are serialized if they are either public or have a getter method.

$person = new Person();
$person->firstName = 'Maria';
$person->lastName = 'Valentina';
$person->age = 36;
$person->isStudent = false;

$serializer = new Serializer();
$json = $serializer->serialize($person);
// {"firstName":"Maria","lastName":"Valentina","age":36,"isStudent":false}

Deserialization

Properties are deserialized if they are public, instantiable in public constructor or have a setter method.

$json = '{"firstName":"Maria","lastName":"Valentina","age":36,"isStudent":false}';
$serializer = new Serializer();
$person = $serializer->deserialize($json, Person::class);

Caching - optional, but highly recommended, otherwise the library will be slow

Supports PSR-6 CacheItemPoolInterface: https://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-6/#cacheitempoolinterface

No need to chain in-memory cache with external cache, the library will do it for you. Cache will be called once per used class (used in serialization or deserialization), then will be cached in memory until the script ends.

$pst6cache = new CacheItemPool(); // Some PSR-6 cache implementation
$serializer = new Serializer(
    metadataExtractor: new CachedMetadataExtractor(
        new MetadataExtractor(),
        $pst6cache,
    ),
);

Custom object property serialized name

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(name: 'changedPropertyName')]
    public string $someProperty;
}

Serialization groups

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(groups: ['group1'])]
    public string $property1;

    // Has implicit group 'default'
    public string $property2;
}

    
$serializer = new Serializer();
$object = new SomeClass();
$object->property1 = 'value1';
$object->property2 = 'value2';
$serializer->serialize($object, attributes: [SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_GROUPS => ['group1']]); // {"property1":"value1"}

Deserialization groups

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(groups: ['group1'])]
    public string $property1;

    // Has implicit group 'default'
    public string $property2;
}

    
$serializer = new Serializer();
$data = '{"property1":"value1","property2":"value2"}';
$object = $serializer->deserialize($data, SomeClass::class, attributes: [SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_GROUPS => ['group1']]);
isset($object->property1); // true
isset($object->property2); // false

Custom date format

On serialization the format will always be respected. On deserialization the format will be used to parse the date. However on deserialization by default if the date is not in the provided format, it will be parsed as is, given that DateTime constructor can parse it.

Per property:

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(attributes: [SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT => 'Y-m-d'])]
    public DateTime $someDate;
}

Or globally:

$serializer = new Serializer(
    attributes: [
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT => \DateTimeInterface::RFC2822,
    ]
);

Enforce date format

If strict data time format is required during deserialization then, you can use the SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT_STRICT attribute:

Per property:

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(attributes: [
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT => 'Y-m-d',
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT_STRICT => true
    ])]
    public DateTime $someDate;
}

Or globally:

$serializer = new Serializer(
    attributes: [
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT => 'Y-m-d',
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_DATETIME_FORMAT_STRICT => true
    ]
);

Ignore property

Those properties will not be included in the serialized values during serialization and will not be populated with provided values during deserialization.

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(ignore: true)]
    public string $someProperty;
}

Handling of NULL values

By default, NULL values are included in the serialized value.

To disable this you can use the SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_SKIP_NULL_VALUES attribute:

Per property:

class SomeClass
{
    #[SerializerContext(attributes: [SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_SKIP_NULL_VALUES => true])]
    public ?string $someProperty;
}

Or globally:

$serializer = new Serializer(
    attributes: [
        SerializerInterface::ATTRIBUTE_SKIP_NULL_VALUES => true,
    ]
);

Support for json serializable objects

If an object implements the JsonSerializable interface, the jsonSerialize method will be called and the result will be serialized.

Build, run & test locally

To enter the prepared container environment:

docker-compose up -d
docker-compose exec library bash

Install package dependencies:

composer install -o

Run tests:

composer test

HTML Coverage locally:

XDEBUG_MODE=coverage vendor/bin/pest --coverage --coverage-html=coverage