Gson PHP

This library is a port of google/gson written in PHP. Its purpose is to easily handle the conversion between PHP objects and JSON. It shares some of google/gson's goals such as:

• A simple interface using toJson and fromJson methods
• Enable serialization and deserialization of 3rd party classes
• Allow schema differences between PHP objects and JSON

And in addition:

• Utilize PHP 7 scalar type hints to be intelligent about property types
• Limit the number of annotations required to use
• Allow serialization decisions based on runtime information

Overview

Here are some simple use cases to get a feel for how the library works

If you have a PHP object you want to convert to JSON

// $object obtained elsewhere

$gson = Gson::builder()->build();
$json = $gson->toJson($object);

What this is doing is using the provided GsonBuilder to set up the Gson object with sensible defaults. Calling Gson::toJson and passing in an object will return a string of JSON.

The reverse is very similar

// $json obtained elsewhere

$gson = Gson::builder()->build();
$fooObject = $gson->fromJson($json, Foo::class);

Now we call Gson::fromJson and pass in the json as a string and the type of object we'd like to map to. In this example, we will be getting an instantiated Foo object back.

If you want to convert your object to a JsonElement, there's a convenience method to do that for you.

// $object obtained elsewhere

$gson = Gson::builder()->build();
$jsonElement = $gson->toJsonElement($object);

This provides a simple way to manipulate the JSON before final encoding. From here, you can call json_encode() on the element to convert it to JSON.

$jsonElement = $gson->toJsonElement($object);
$jsonElement->asObject()->addString('foo', 'bar');
$json = json_encode($jsonElement);

Note that this will do a full conversion from the object to JSON, then back to JsonElements. This is done to take advantage of all custom serialization rules.

Likewise, there are methods to operate on arrays instead of strings of json

// $object obtained elsewhere

$gson = Gson::builder()->build();
$jsonArray = $gson->toArray($object);
$object = $gson->fromArray($jsonArray);

Documentation

• Customizing Serialization/Deserialization
• Excluding Classes and Properties
• Customizing Class Instantiation
• Types
• Json Element
• Annotation Reference
• Advanced Usage

Installation

This library requires PHP 7.1

composer require tebru/gson-php

Be sure and set up the annotation loader in one of your initial scripts.

$loader = require __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
\Doctrine\Common\Annotations\AnnotationRegistry::registerLoader([$loader, 'loadClass']);

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. Please see the LICENSE file for more information.