Description

Currently, using JSON is the facto standard and well supported for all normalizers.
What I found is that the XmlEncoder decodes/encodes the XML to array, but converts extra attributes with a @ prefix and uses # to identity the node value.

This conversion makes it extremely difficult to use the ObjectNormalizer and fill out DTOs with specific XML data instead of consuming just the array returned by the XmlEncoder.

Example:

The array:
['foo' => ['@bar' => 'value', '#' => 'baz']];
generates the following XML output:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <response>
     <foo bar="value">
        baz
     </foo>
</response>

What if I want to use my own DTOs?

Possible solution

Create a custom name converter that handles the extra attributes and XML node values. That way you can out of the box, use the ObjectNormalizer to set specific attributes in a specific object.

Example

We can use custom prefixes for attributes and node values, so we match them with our DTOs:

By using this name converter, we can configure the ObjectNormalizer:

$objectNormalizer  = new ObjectNormalizer(null, new SpecialAttributesConverter(), null, $phpDocExtractor);

Conclusion

By using this PR, it's possible to manage XML requests/responses just by using DTOs with types, instead of relying on arrays to build your XML requests and read from XML responses with extra attributes.