how to update symfony2/doctrine entity from a @Groups inclusion policy JMSSerializer deserialized entity

Question

I\'m trying to update symfony2/doctrine entities using JMSSerializer with an @ExclusionPolicy:None @Groups Inclusion Policy.

 * @Serializer\\ExclusionPolicy(         


        

Answer 1

I found the answer.

$serializer is a service created by the symfony2 integration bundle JMSSerializerBundle.

The default service is jms_serializer.serializer initializes the JMSSerializer with the default Object Constructor UnserializeObjectConstructor and for doctrine I needed to deserialize with the DoctrineObjectConstructor.

because I only use JMSSerializer in the project for serialize/deserialize of doctrine entities, I overwrote JMSSerializerBundle's jms_serializer.object_constructor with the alias of the proper object constructor service.

Is there a better way to configure what object constructor the serializer uses?

I also added the proper context to deserialize:

$serializer->deserialize($jsonFoo,'Foo','json', DeserializationContext::create()->setGroups(array('flag')));

result:
Foo (id:1, name:'bar', flagged:true ,created_by:123)

Using the doctrine object constructor, it figures out that I want to find the object and only apply updates to fields provided in $jsonFoo (and the flag group). This totally eliminates the need for doctrines entity manager merge and I can just persist the object properly.

$em->persist($foo);
$em->flush();