How to make Phalcon ODM parse model properies as objects but not arrays?

Question

Let's say we have Collection class Product. Products have multiple additional variants. Let's say each variant has name and price.

class ProductVariant
{
     public $name;
     public $price;
}

/*
* @property string $name
* @property ProductVariant[] $variants
*/
class Product extends \Phalcon\Mvc\Collection
{

}

Then we create a product and save it:

$variant1 = new ProductVariant();
$variant2 = new ProductVariant();

$variant1->name = '...';
$variant2->name = '...';


$product = new Product();
$product->name = '...';
$product->variants = array($variant1, $variant2);

$product->save();

Model gets serialized and saved in MongoDB, there is no information about ProductVariant. And of course when we retrieve this product from the database we get array of arrays instead of array of ProductVariant.

Is there an easy way how we can override Phalcon ODM parsing and make it parse some properies as objects (or array of objects)?

How do you hande such case?

Answer 1

I have a 'beforeSave' on the ODM model, wich transforms my 'ProductVariants' to arrays, inserting the ProductVariant::class name on the model.

Then I use afterFetch and afterSave to transform back the arrays to 'ProductVariants' using a factory or builder whose name is composed using the class name.

Example on pseudoCode:

beforeSave: 
$currentProduct = $productVariant->toArray();
$currentProduct['class'] = get_class($productVariant);


afterFetch
$builderName = $currentProduct->class.'Builder';
$builder = new $builderName();
$productVariant = $builder->create($currentProduct);


afterSave = afterFetch