Serialization profile/definition builder

[Dynom]

Hi,

I have a case where I'd like to specify properties/entities at runtime. Doing this using the groups tactic will result in a unwanted high maintenance situation. As a lot of groups need to be defined for many possible combinations. Unless groups is abused and a group is defined for every property. I guess that it's not only wanted, but also not the idea behind groups.

I would settle for a builder approach, something that the SerializationContext class might embrace. An idea is to introduce a certain profile/definition:

// Accept requirements from the request
$serializationProfile = SerializationProfile::create( $request->getParams() );

// Last-minute override
$serializationProfile->getRelation('orders')->exclude(array('profit'));

// just for demonstration
$serializationProfile->only(array('id', 'username', 'e-mail'));

// The actual serialization
$serializer->serialize($model, 'json', $serializationProfile);

This way it's trivial for a client to specify fields and optionally what resources to embed. Example:

/user/42?embed=address,orders.product&orders.product.properties=id,name

This should:

• Include all the "addresses" this user has
• Include all the "orders" this user has
• Include the product id and name for each product in the order

[schmittjoh]

This is already possible using a custom exclusion policy.

If you can make a general implementation, feel free to open a PR with it.