Provider

Warning

Providers are experimental and may change in the future.

Providers are a way to instantiate the target during the mapping process.

By default, the AutoMapper will try to instantiate the target object using the constructor, or without if not possible. However, in some cases you may want to use a custom provider. Like fetch the object from the database, or use a factory.

In this case you can create a provider class that implements the ProviderInterface interface.

use AutoMapper\Provider\ProviderInterface;

class MyProvider implements ProviderInterface
{
    public function provide(string $targetType, mixed $source, array $context): object|null
    {
        return new $targetType();
    }
}

You have to register this provider when you create the AutoMapper object.

use AutoMapper\AutoMapper;

$autoMapper = AutoMapper::create(providers: [new MyProvider()]);

Note

When using the Symfony Bundle version of the AutoMapper, you can use the auto_mapper.provider tag to register the provider. If you have autoconfiguration enabled, you do not need to register the provider manually as the tag will be automatically added.

Then you can use the #[MapProvider] attribute on top of the target class that you want to use this provider.

use AutoMapper\Attribute\MapProvider;

#[MapProvider(provider: MyProvider::class)]
class Entity
{
}

Note

When using the Symfony Bundle version of the AutoMapper, the provider will be the service id, which may be different from the class name.

Now, every time the AutoMapper needs to instantiate the Entity class, it will use the MyProvider class.

If you provider return null, the AutoMapper will try to instantiate the target object using the constructor, or without if not possible.

Note

When using the target_to_populate option in the context array, the AutoMapper will use this object instead of the one created by the provider.

Early return

If you want to return the object from the provider without mapping the properties, you can return a AutoMapper\Provider\EarlyReturn object from the provide method with the object you want to return inside.

use AutoMapper\Provider\EarlyReturn;
use AutoMapper\Provider\ProviderInterface;

class MyProvider implements ProviderInterface
{
    public function provide(string $targetType, mixed $source, array $context): object|null
    {
        return new EarlyReturn(new $targetType());
    }
}