Deserialization of collection when wraped by aditional xml tags

[jantajov]

Greetings I am currently trying to figure out how can I deserialize XML collection when there is an additional tag in my way.

I have following XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<countries>
    <items>
        <country>
            <continentGeoId>6255147</continentGeoId>
            <countryCode>AF</countryCode>
            <countryGeoId>1149361</countryGeoId>
            <name>Afghanistan</name>
        </country>
        <country>
            <continentGeoId>6255148</continentGeoId>
            <countryCode>AX</countryCode>
            <countryGeoId>661882</countryGeoId>
            <name>Aland Islands</name>
        </country>
        <country>
            <continentGeoId>6255148</continentGeoId>
            <countryCode>AL</countryCode>
            <countryGeoId>783754</countryGeoId>
            <name>Albania</name>
        </country>
    </items>
</countries>

and this is my class:

/**
 * Class Country
 * @XmlRoot("country")
 * @ExclusionPolicy("none")
 */
class Country {

    /**
     * @var integer Country GEO identifier.
     * @Type("integer")
     * @SerializedName("countryGeoId")
     */
    private $countryGeoId;
    /**
     * @var string Country name.
     * @Type("string")
     * @SerializedName("name")
     */
    private $name;
    /**
     * @var string 2-letter country code.
     * @Type("string")
     * @SerializedName("countryCode")
     */
    private $countryCode;
    /**
     * @var integer GEO identifier of continent.
     * @Type("integer")
     * @SerializedName("continentGeoId")
     */
    private $continentGeoId;

    /**
     * @return int
     */
    public function getCountryGeoId() {
        return $this->countryGeoId;
    }
    /**
     * @param int $countryGeoId
     */
    public function setCountryGeoId($countryGeoId) {
        $this->countryGeoId = $countryGeoId;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getName() {
        return $this->name;
    }
    /**
     * @param string $name
     */
    public function setName($name) {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getCountryCode() {
        return $this->countryCode;
    }
    /**
     * @param string $countryCode
     */
    public function setCountryCode($countryCode) {
        $this->countryCode = $countryCode;
    }

    /**
     * @return int
     */
    public function getContinentGeoId() {
        return $this->continentGeoId;
    }
    /**
     * @param int $continentGeoId
     */
    public function setContinentGeoId($continentGeoId) {
        $this->continentGeoId = $continentGeoId;
    }

}

Then I tried:

$serializer = JMS\Serializer\SerializerBuilder::create()->build();
$collection = $serializer->deserialize($xml, 'ArrayCollection<' . Country::class . '>', 'xml');

[goetas]

you need a custom deserializer to handle it,

$serializer = JMS\Serializer\SerializerBuilder::create()->build();
$collection = $serializer->deserialize($xml, 'MyNestedCollection<' . Country::class . '>', 'xml');

Now you can add a handler for the virtual type MyNestedCollection and inside it, get the items element and perform a "visitArray" (or $navigator->accept())

[jantajov]

Actually, I have solved it by introducing wrapper class CountryCollection

/**
 * Class CountryCollection
 * @XmlRoot("countries")
 */
class CountryCollection {

    /**
     * @var Country[]
     * @Type("array<Country>")
     * @XmlList(entry="country")
     * @SerializedName("items")
     */
    private $items;

// ... etc
}

[goetas]

it works too... but with a custom deserializer, your model stays "clean"