JMS Serializer Exclude Entity field in Symfony2 Controller

Question

I have an Entity of mine which I would like to expose in a JSON API that I'm developing, the problem is that in this particular controller, there is just one field which I don't want to expose. Is there a way to exclude it from serialization from within the controller?

I know I can annotate my entity so the serializer just passes by that field, but what happens in all the other cases? This is really the exception.

Answer 1

You can assign each property to a group, then define that group in a context when serializing from the controller.

Your entity:

use JMS\Serializer\Annotations as Serializer;

class Comment
{
    /** @Serializer\Groups({"main", "secondary"}) */
    private $id;

    /** @Serializer\Groups({"main", "secondary"}) */
    private $title;

    /** @Serializer\Groups({"main", "secondary"}) */
    private $name;

    /** @Serializer\Groups({"main"}) */
    private $email;

    /** @Serializer\Groups({"main", "secondary"}) */
    private $message;
}

Then in your controller

use JMS\Serializer\SerializationContext;

$serializer->serialize(
    new Comment(),
    'json',
    SerializationContext::create()->setGroups(array('secondary'))
);

In this example, the email field is excluded from the serialized data, but only for the group named secondary . You can of course call these groups whatever you like.