JMS serializer deserialize doctrine entity with inheritance

Question

I have an Doctrine Entity that uses inheritance:

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @ORM\DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @ORM\DiscriminatorMap({"video" = "Video", "text" = "Text", "image" = "Image" })
 * @ORM\Table(name="item_block_content")
 * @ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
 *
 * @Serializer\Discriminator(field = "discr", map = {
 *    "text": "Namespace\To\Entity\Text",
 *    "video": "Namespace\To\Entity\Video",
 *    "image": "Namespace\To\Entity\Image"
 * })
 */
class Content implements interfaces\Response {
...
}

I also do have an Item Entity that contains a collection of Content Entities. When I serialize those entities to XML using the JMSSerializer I do see an discr column.

<id />
<metadata />
<metadata_technical />
<created>2013-07-01T11:59:50+02:00</created>
<modified>2013-07-01T12:35:51+02:00</modified>
<title>Some title</title>
<text>Some text</text>
<discr>text</discr>

When I want to deserialize the XML I get the expected result with the exception of the Content classes. They are all \Namespace\To\Entity\Content objects. This way I cannot save the changes to the database.

In the code examples above I already tried the @Discriminator annotation to specify the entity types, but this does not work. Any idea how I can get this to work? I think I'm close, but I'm out of ideas.

EDIT

If I make the following change in the parent class:

/**
 * @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Namespace\To\Entity\Content", mappedBy="Block", cascade={"persist"})
 *
 * @Type("ArrayCollection<Namespace\To\Entity\Content>")
 */

to

/**
 * @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Namespace\To\Entity\Content", mappedBy="Block", cascade={"persist"})
 *
 * @Type("ArrayCollection<Namespace\To\Entity\Text>")
 */

And I only add Text elements its working properly, but adding other elements will (ofcourse) break.

Answer 1

Looking at BaseSerializationTest and the Fixture Vehicle ... @Discriminator should do exactly what you're trying to achieve.

There must be something wrong with the way you deserialize your objects. Mapping correctly applied? No Exlusion Strategy or Groups involved?