Property Type

When mapping properties, AutoMapper uses the property type to determine how to map the value from the source to the target.

It works well when both source and target properties are object, but when mapping to or from a generic data structure like an array or \stdClass, the property type is not available.

In this case the type is, by default, transformed to a native PHP type (int, float, string, bool, array, object, null).

You can override this behavior by specifying the sourcePropertyType or targetPropertyType argument in the #[MapTo] or #[MapFrom] attributes.

class Entity
{
    #[MapTo(target: 'array', targetPropertyType: 'int']
    public string $number;
}

In this example, when mapping to an array, the number property will be converted to an int instead of a string.

This can also be useful when mapping to an object type with an union type, but you want to force a specific type during the mapping.

class EntityDto
{
    #[MapTo(target: Entity:class, sourcePropertyType: 'int']
    private int|float $value;
}

In this example we consider, that the source property is always an int, so AutoMapper will never consider the float type during the mapping.