Serializer guidelines

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The Serializer module provides a Spryker-native wrapper around the Symfony Serializer component. It exposes serialization operations through the Spryker Service layer and supports extension via plugins.

Operations

The SerializerServiceInterface provides four operations:

Method Description
serialize() Converts data to a string format (JSON, XML, CSV)
deserialize() Converts a string into a typed object
normalize() Converts an object or data structure to an associative array
denormalize() Converts an array into a typed object

All operations accept an optional SerializerContextTransfer to configure behavior.

SerializerContextTransfer

The SerializerContextTransfer maps Spryker transfer conventions to Symfony Serializer context options. Supported options include:

  • groups — serialization groups for attribute filtering
  • isSkipNullValues — omit null properties from output
  • isSkipUninitializedValues — omit uninitialized properties
  • isPreserveEmptyObjects — keep empty objects as {} instead of []
  • isEnableMaxDepth — enable max depth handling
  • datetimeFormat — custom date/time format string
  • datetimeTimezone — timezone for date/time normalization
  • defaultConstructorArguments — default constructor arguments for denormalization
  • symfonyContext — raw Symfony context array for advanced use cases (overrides explicit properties)

For the full list of Symfony context options, see the Symfony Serializer documentation.

Extension via plugins

The module supports two plugin interfaces for registering custom normalizers and encoders:

  • SerializerNormalizerPluginInterface — provides additional normalizers/denormalizers
  • SerializerEncoderPluginInterface — provides additional encoders/decoders

Register plugins in your project’s SerializerDependencyProvider:

protected function getSerializerNormalizerPlugins(): array
{
    return [
        new YourCustomNormalizerPlugin(),
    ];
}

Custom normalizers are prepended before built-in normalizers, giving them higher priority.

Built-in support

The module includes the following Symfony normalizers and encoders out of the box:

Normalizers: ObjectNormalizer, ArrayDenormalizer, DateTimeNormalizer, DateTimeZoneNormalizer, DateIntervalNormalizer, BackedEnumNormalizer, DataUriNormalizer, JsonSerializableNormalizer, UidNormalizer, UnwrappingDenormalizer

Encoders: JsonEncoder, XmlEncoder, CsvEncoder