Getting started: using JSON Schema¶

Jane JSON Schema is a library to generate models and serializers in PHP from a JSON Schema draft 2019-09.

Installation¶

Add this library with composer as a dev dependency:

composer require --dev jane-php/json-schema

This library contains a lot of dependencies to be able to generate code which are not needed on runtime. However, the generated code depends on other libraries and a few classes that are available through the runtime package. It is highly recommended to add the runtime dependency as a requirement through composer:

composer require jane-php/json-schema-runtime

With Symfony ecosystem, we created a recipe to make it easier to use Jane. You just have to allow contrib recipes before installing our packages:

composer config extra.symfony.allow-contrib true

Then when installing jane-php/json-schema, it will add all required files:

bin/json-schema-generate: a binary file to run JSON Schema generation based on config/jane/json-schema.php configuration.
config/jane/json-schema.php: your Jane configuration (see “Configuration file”)
config/packages/json-schema.yaml: Symfony Serializer configured to be optimized for Jane

By default, generated code is not formatted. To make it compliant to PSR2 standard and others format norms, you can add the PHP CS Fixer library to your dev dependencies (and it makes it easier to debug!):

composer require --dev friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer

Generating¶

This library provides a PHP console application to generate the Model. You can use it by executing the following command at the root of your project:

php vendor/bin/jane generate

This command will try to read a config file named .jane located on the current working directory. However, you can name it as you like and use the --config-file option to specify its location and name:

php vendor/bin/jane generate --config-file=jane-configuration.php

Note

If you are using Symfony recipe, this command is embbeded in the bin/json-schema-generate binary file, you only have to run it to make it work 🎉

Note

No others options can be passed to this command. Having a config file ensure that a team working on the project always use the same set of parameters and, when it changes, give vision of the new option(s) used to generate the code.

Configuration file¶

The configuration file consists of a simple PHP script returning an array:

<?php

return [
    'json-schema-file' => __DIR__ . '/json-schema.json',
    'root-class' => 'MyModel',
    'namespace' => 'Vendor\Library\Generated',
    'directory' => __DIR__ . '/generated',
];

This example shows the minimum configuration required to generate a Model:

json-schema-file: Specify the location of your json schema file, it can be a local file or a remote one https://my.domain.com/my-schema.json

root-class: The root class of the root object defined in your json schema, if there is no property on the root object it will not be used

namespace: Root namespace of all of your generated code

directory: Directory where the code will be generated at

Given this configuration you will need to add the following configuration to composer, in order to setup the PSR-4 autoload for the generated files:

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "Vendor\\Library\\Generated\\": "generated/"
    }
}

For more details about generating JSON Schema, you can read “Component: JSON Schema” documentation.

Using¶

This library generates basics P.O.P.O. objects (Plain Old PHP Objects) with a bunch of setters / getters. It also generates all normalizers to handle denormalization from a json string, and normalization.

All normalizers respect the Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\NormalizerInterface and Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\DenormalizerInterface from the Symfony Serializer Component.

It also generate a JaneObjectNormalizer class that will act as an usual Symfony Normalizer that will lazy-load any needed normalizers.

Given this configuration:

<?php

return [
    'json-schema-file' => __DIR__ . '/json-schema.json',
    'root-class' => 'MyModel',
    'namespace' => 'Vendor\Library\Generated',
    'directory' => __DIR__ . '/generated',
];

To use it out of Symfony ecosystem, you will have to do this:

<?php

$normalizers = [
    new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\ArrayDenormalizer(),
    new \Vendor\Library\Generated\Normalizer\JaneObjectNormalizer(),
];

$serializer = new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Serializer($normalizers, [new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\JsonEncoder()]);
$serializer->deserialize('{...}');

With Symfony ecosystem, you just have to use the recipe and all the configuration will be added automatically. This serializer will be able to encode and decode every data respecting your JSON Schema specification thanks to autowiring of the generated normalizers.