FOSRestbundle: Serialize public method as field

Question

I have an entity with a standard datetimetz field, with standard getter and setter:

/**
 * @var \DateTime
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="date", type="datetimetz")
 */
private $date;

/**
 * Get date
 *
 * @return \DateTime
 */
public function getDate() {
    return $this->date;
}

/**
 * Set date
 *
 * @param \DateTime $date
 * @return ConsultationForm
 */
public function setDate($date) {
    $this->date = $date;
    return $this;
}

Serializing this works just fine, and the resulting JSON has a field with a string representing the date:

date: "2014-07-05T09:53:45+0200"

However, I would like to add a second method to my entity, which returns a Unix timestamp corresponding to my date object:

/**
 * Get date as millis
 *
 * @return int
 */
public function getDateAsMillis() {
    return $this->date->getTimestamp();
}

I would like the output of this method to also be encoded as a JSON field in the resulting object:

dateAsMillis: 3423435252345232

How can I instruct the FOSRestbundle or the serialiser to do this automatically?

Answer 1

You can use the VirtualPropery annotation (http://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer/master/reference/annotations#virtualproperty)

/**
 * @JMS\VirtualProperty
 * @JMS\SerializedName("dateAsMillis")
 */ 
  public function getDateAsMillis() {
    return $this->date->getTimestamp();
  }