Upcoming 2.0

[goetas]

The intent is to cleanup the core, keeping it compatible with the public api for the majority of cases.

There will be no killing feature, but mainly closing a big list of annoying bugs and unexpected behaviors that are present in the 1.x versions.
After many year, some bugs become features and many developers found workarounds that were relying on those bugs... the 2.0 release will be mainly a cleaning release.

The goal is to allow upgrading transparently from 1.x to 2.x serializer in "standard" use-cases, including customizations as custom subscribing handlers, event listeners, exclusion strategies.

Features and bugfixes

Here a list of features, enhancements and bugfixes that will be introduced with the 2.0 release (not all are yet confirmed)

Breaking changes

• Removed the abstract classes GenericSerializationVisitor and GenericDeserializationVisitor, extend the specific visitor instead.
• Added GraphNavigatorInterface interface, changed method signatures to use GraphNavigatorInterface instead of GraphNavigator class
• GraphNavigator is an abstract class now and is ony for internal proposes
• Removed deprecated method VisitorInterface::getNavigator() from all the visitors, use Context::getNavigator() instead
• Removed deprecated method JsonSerializationVisitor::addData, use JsonSerializationVisitor::setData instead
• Removed Propel and PhpCollection support
• Changed default date format from ISO8601 to RFC3339
• Event listeners/handlers class names are case sensitive now
• Changed default "serializeNull" value from NULL to false
• Removed Context::accept() method, use Context::getNavigator()->accept()
• Removed AbstractVisitor::getNamingStrategy() method from all the visitors
• Removed Symfony 2.x support
• Removed PHP Driver metadata support
• Removed in-object handler callbacks, use event listeners instead
• Deprecated VisitorInterface, use SerializationVisitorInterface and DeserializationVisitorInterface instead
• Changed SerializerInterface::serialize signature to serialize($data, $format, SerializationContext $context = null, $type = null)
• Changed ArrayTransformerInterface::toArray signature to toArray($data, SerializationContext $context = null, $type = null);
• Removed Context::initialize, use DeserializationContext::initialize and SerializationContext::initialize
• Removed Serializer::setSerializationContextFactory and Serializer::setDeserializationContextFactory, context factories are now constructor parameters
• Marked as final many classes, use composition over inheritance
• PHP 7.2 is the minimum PHP version

In which situations transparent upgrade will not work?

Transparent upgrades probably are not possible if:

• you have extended in your application a "visitor" or implemented a custom one
• you have extended the main class Serializer re-implementing the serialize or toArray method
• you have re-implemented SerializerInterface or ArrayTransformerInterface
• implemented ObjectConstructorInterface
• extended one of the internal classes, now marked as final (always prefer composition over extension) (list will be available soon)

Github issues

Doing a quick analysis of the currently listed github "issues" for the jms serializer and jms serializer bundle i found out that:

• 40% are support requests (many duplicates)
• 30% are bugs or unexpected behaviors (many duplicates)
• 20% are feature requests (some duplicates)
• Mixed stuff

The 2.0 release should close at least 40 tickets

Todo

Issues:

• serialize null should be a boolean in the context #740 serialize null should be a boolean in the context
• Use ISO 8601 compliant datetime format as default #714 Use ISO 8601 compliant datetime format as default
• Serializer::handleDeserializeResult() changes the result after using Visitor::visitArray() #710 Serializer::handleDeserializeResult() changes the result after using Visitor::visitArray()
• Deprecate set*ContextFactory in the Serializer to keep it immutable #691 Deprecate set*ContextFactory in the Serializer to keep it immutable
• Remove Symfony Validator <2.6 support #687 Remove Symfony Validator <2.6 support
• Remove PHP metadata driver #686 Remove PHP metadata driver
• Prevent doctrine proxy loading for virtual types by default #685 Prevent doctrine proxy loading for virtual types by default
• MaxDepth is handled incorrectly with Collections #632 MaxDepth is handled incorrectly with Collections
• Replace deprecated getMock with createMock #628 Replace deprecated getMock with createMock
• Event Listeners are "lowercasing" class names for event match #624 Event Listeners are "lowercasing" class names for event match
• Removed unused imports #623 Removed unused imports
• Remove PhpCollection and PhpOption and use arrays instead #616 Remove PhpCollection and PhpOption and use arrays instead
• Remove handler callback  #615 Remove handler callback
• Use a value object for the "type" #614 Use a value object for the "type"
• Do not instantiate visitors in the serialization builder #613 Do not instantiate visitors in the serialization builder
• Change type hint for TypeParser on Serializer #612 Change type hint for TypeParser on Serializer
• #373 serializer fix #475 serializer fix
• GraphNavigator using \LogicException without serializer namespace #473 GraphNavigator using \LogicException without serializer namespace
• better json serialized of a formtype #401 better json serialized of a formtype
• GraphNavigatorInterface #338 GraphNavigatorInterface
• Fixed handling of runs of capital letters in CamelCaseNamingStrategy #295 Fixed handling of runs of capital letters in CamelCaseNamingStrategy

[TNAJanssen]

What is the ETA of version 2.0?

[goetas]

there is not really.
I'm not sure that the benefits are worth the BC break.

[goetas]

Wohooo! Rebased

[Tobion]

thanks for working on this. On my wishlist performance improvements would come first. We use jms serializer heavily for an api. and the jms serializer is taking a huge chunk of the response time for big object graphs due to its graph navigator pattern. so if there was a way to make the serializer faster for 2.0, even if it means removing some uncommon features, that would be cool. we mostly use versioning, groups and virtual properties. i don't know if there is potential for improvement when you don't need event listeners for example. do you have any plans in this regard?

[goetas]

Thanks for the feedback! Actually #875 and #861 bring already a ~10% of improvements already in the 1.x serie.

[goetas]

Regarding your setup, to get the best performance make sure to have a look to #760 and #684.

They default values gives you the worst performance, this because the aim is guarantee 100% of backward compatibility, but setting:

$skipVirtualTypeInit = true;
$initializeExcluded = false;

In some cases i got even 300% of performance improvements without doing anything else...

If you are using the symfony-bundle v2.x, then you are already benefiting the optimized values.

[goetas]

Current status 🎉