Construct object during deserialization on JMS Serializer - symfony

Question

I try to load object from database (Symfony, Doctrine) during deserialization using JMS Serializer. Lets say that I have a simple football api application, two entities Team and Game, teams with id 45 and 46 are already in db.
When creating a new game from json:
{
"teamHost": 45,
"teamGues": 46,
"scoreHost": 54,
"scoreGuest": 42,
}
Game entity:
class Game {
/**
* #ORM\Id()
* #ORM\GeneratedValue()
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Team")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(nullable=false)
*/
private $teamHost;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Team")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(nullable=false)
*/
private $teamGuest;
I would like to create a Game object that has already loaded teams from the database.
$game = $this->serializer->deserialize($requestBody, \App\Entity\Game::class, 'json');
Looking for a solution I found something like jms_serializer.doctrine_object_constructor but there are no specific examples in the documentation.
Are you able to help me with the creation of an object from the database during deserialization?

Answer 1

You need to create a custom handler:
https://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer/master/handlers
A simple example:
<?php
namespace App\Serializer\Handler;
use App\Entity\Team;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use JMS\Serializer\Context;
use JMS\Serializer\GraphNavigator;
use JMS\Serializer\Handler\SubscribingHandlerInterface;
use JMS\Serializer\JsonDeserializationVisitor;
class TeamHandler implements SubscribingHandlerInterface
{
private $em;
public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
{
$this->em = $em;
}
public static function getSubscribingMethods()
{
return [
[
'direction' => GraphNavigator::DIRECTION_DESERIALIZATION,
'format' => 'json',
'type' => Team::class,
'method' => 'deserializeTeam',
],
];
}
public function deserializeTeam(JsonDeserializationVisitor $visitor, $id, array $type, Context $context)
{
return $this->em->getRepository(Team::class)->find($id);
}
}
Altough I would recommend universal approach to handle any entity you want by a single handler.
Example: https://gist.github.com/Glifery/f035e698b5e3a99f11b5
Also, this question has been asked before:
JMSSerializer deserialize entity by id