Error deserializing a map of (nullable) objects

[marcospassos]

Hi folks!

We have a use case here where we need to deserialize an array<string,User> where a user can be null. Furthermore, User has a couple of subclasses. Whenever we try to deserialize such map, we got the following error:

The discriminator field name "type" for base-class "Acme\User" was not found in input data.

Is this the expected behavior?

[goetas]

actually yes. if your type is array<string,User> then all the instances inside the array have to be User (this means having a valid type field). array<string,User|null> is not a supported feature.

[marcospassos]

Is there any workaround?

[goetas]

you can specify the array as:array<string,NullableVirutalUser> and add a custom type handler:

class NullableVirutalUserHandler implements SubscribingHandlerInterface
{
    public static function getSubscribingMethods()
    {
        $methods = array();
            $methods[] = array(
                'direction' => GraphNavigator::DIRECTION_DESERIALIZATION,
                'type' => 'NullableVirutalUser',
                'format' => 'json',
                'method' => 'deserializeNullableUser',
            );

        return $methods;
    }

    public function deserializeNullableUser(VisitorInterface $visitor, $data, array $type, Context $context)
    {
        if (!$data) { // null
            return  null;
        } else {
          return  $context->accpet($data, ['name'=> 'User', 'params' => []], $context);
        }
    }
}

maybe the syntax is no 100% correct, but hope you get the idea

[scaytrase]

@goetas hello, will this be supported at some point?