Deserializing from JSON into PHP, with casting?

Question

Suppose I have a User class with \'name\' and \'password\' properties, and a \'save\' method. When serializing an object of this class to JSON via json_encode, the method is pro

Answer 1

I think the best way to handle this would be via the constructor, either directly or via a factory:

class User
{
   public $username;
   public $nestedObj; //another class that has a constructor for handling json
   ...

   // This could be make private if the factories below are used exclusively
   // and then make more sane constructors like:
   //     __construct($username, $password)
   public function __construct($mixed)
   {
       if (is_object($mixed)) {
           if (isset($mixed->username))
               $this->username = $mixed->username;
           if (isset($mixed->nestedObj) && is_object($mixed->nestedObj))
               $this->nestedObj = new NestedObject($mixed->nestedObj);
           ...
       } else if (is_array($mixed)) {
           if (isset($mixed['username']))
               $this->username = $mixed['username'];
           if (isset($mixed['nestedObj']) && is_array($mixed['nestedObj']))
               $this->nestedObj = new NestedObj($mixed['nestedObj']);
           ...
       }
   }
   ...

   public static fromJSON_by_obj($json)
   {
       return new self(json_decode($json));
   }

   public static fromJSON_by_ary($json)
   {
       return new self(json_decode($json, TRUE)); 
   }
}