Json:serialize should get DateTime object as string

Questions Components & MVC
,
1

I have here an object and one of its properties is a DateTime object. Now I want to use Json::serialize() to get the JSON representation of it. Is there a way to instruct Json::serialize() to get the DateTime object as a string? The idea is that automatically ->format('c') would be called on the DateTime object.

Is this possible?

2

You can use a hydrator with a strategy for dates before converting the data to JSON.

Otherwise the PHP function json_encode already converts the DateTime object:

$object               = new stdClass();
$object->artist       = 'David Bowie';
$object->title        = 'Modern Love';
$object->duration     = '4:46';
$object->album        = 'Let\'s Dance';
$object->release_date = new DateTime('1983-04-14');

$json = json_encode($object);
var_dump($json);

{
    "artist": "David Bowie",
    "title": "Modern Love",
    "duration": "4:46",
    "album": "Let\u0027s Dance",
    "release_date": {
        "date": "1983-04-14 00:00:00.000000",
        "timezone_type": 3,
        "timezone": "UTC"
    }
}
3

In this case the hydrator because I need it like this:

"release_date": "1983-04-14 00:00:00.000000",

and not with a sub-object.

Thank you for both ideas. I didn’t know that json_encode() does it automatically.

4

You can ignore laminas-json, it was a good solution in the past because it provided a fallback:

ext/json

By default, the above two calls will proxy to the json_decode() and json_encode() functions of ext/json, which is bundled in default installations of PHP. Using laminas-json, however, ensures that the functionality works regardless of whether or not the extension is available. Additionally, the component provides some features not found in ext/json, such as encoding native JSON expressions, communicating class inheritance, and customizations around pretty printing.

5

Example:

$object               = new stdClass();
$object->title        = 'Modern Love';
$object->duration     = '4:46';
$object->artist       = 'David Bowie';
$object->album        = 'Let\'s Dance';
$object->release_date = new DateTime('1983-04-14');

$hydrator = new Laminas\Hydrator\ObjectPropertyHydrator();
$hydrator->addStrategy(
    'release_date',
    new Laminas\Hydrator\Strategy\DateTimeFormatterStrategy(
        'Y-m-d'
    )
);

$values = json_encode($hydrator->extract($object), JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
var_dump($values);

{
    "title": "Modern Love",
    "duration": "4:46",
    "artist": "David Bowie",
    "album": "Let's Dance",
    "release_date": "1983-04-14"
}
1 Like
6

Thank you very much. That was indeed helpful.