Understanding the `source` and `target`¶

The source and target are the most important concepts in AutoMapper.

A Mapper happens when the source and target are both user defined class.

$source = new User();
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, UserDTO::class);

There may be case when you want to map to an existing object.

$source = new User();
$target = new UserDTO();
$autoMapper->map($source, $target);

In the case the mapper will update the target object with the values from the source object.

Normalization is the process of converting an object to an array with scalar values.

$source = new User();
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, 'array');

You can also normalize to an stdClass.

$source = new User();
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, \stdClass::class);

Like the map method, you can also normalize to an existing array.

$source = new User();
$target = ['id' => 1];
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, $target);

Note

In this case you have to assign the result of the map method to the $target variable since it is not passed by reference.

Denormalization is the process of converting an array or stdClass to an object.

$source = ['id' => 1];
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, User::class);

Clone is a special case of mapping where the source and target are the same class.

$source = new User();
$target = $autoMapper->map($source, User::class);

assert($source !== $target);

Note

Also in this case it will do a deep clone of the source object, even sub-objects will be cloned and not referenced.

Understanding the source and target¶