Serializer VS Valinor

Making a class "final" is always a bad decision IMO. You would never know how will other people use your library. For example, we used JMSSerializerBundle and wanted to extend DateHandler to make it not to throw exceptions if a date string is invalid. But the class is final. So we had to just copy-paste it :(

Or this popular alternative: https://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer

JMS Serializer: This library allows you to (de-)serialize data of any complexity. Currently, it supports XML and JSON.

Only took a very brief look, but it looks nice. I like that the DTO class isn't required to extend anything, and that it seems to be for real DTOs used for actual transfer of data between systems - not 'local dtos'. It feels like this might be more comparable to something like schmittjoh/serializer rather than spatie/data-transfer-object.

When it's time to create the PDF, convert the object structure to an XML using an already existing serializer (like JMS or symfony serializer) or do this by hand.

One frequently used serializer is JMS Serializer which allows you to convert JSON or XML to objects (or the other way around if needed). You can then use the objects in your application.

cuyz/valinor: PHP library that helps to map any input into a strongly-typed value object structure.

I know there are alternatives like Valinor (https://github.com/CuyZ/Valinor)

For the next major version, i'm considering giving the option to use valinor (or anything else) instead of the Serializer component in the next major version. If you have more ideas, let me know.

You can check the repository on GitHub; there is also a documentation website.

See also: Valinor https://github.com/CuyZ/Valinor which does some of what you want, albeit in a more verbose fashion, but without polluting your objects.