👀 Views: 0 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-22

php json datetime serialization php8.2 PHP

Could someone explain I'm dealing with I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple. I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm facing an issue with JSON serialization of `DateTimeImmutable` objects in PHP 8.2. When I attempt to encode an object containing a `DateTimeImmutable` instance, the serialized output is unexpectedly different than when I used PHP 7.4. For example, I have the following class: ```php class Event { private DateTimeImmutable $eventDate; public function __construct(DateTimeImmutable $eventDate) { $this->eventDate = $eventDate; } public function getEventDate(): DateTimeImmutable { return $this->eventDate; } } ``` When I create an instance of `Event` and serialize it using `json_encode`: ```php $event = new Event(new DateTimeImmutable('2023-10-01T12:00:00Z')); $json = json_encode($event); ``` I expected to see something like this in the output: ```json {"eventDate":"2023-10-01T12:00:00+00:00"} ``` Instead, I'm getting: ```json {"eventDate":{"date":"2023-10-01 12:00:00.000000","timezone_type":3,"timezone":"UTC"}} ``` This new structure is less convenient for my use case, as I'm working with a front-end that expects a simple string representation of the date. I've checked the documentation and couldn't find any breaking changes related to `DateTimeImmutable` serialization in PHP 8.2. To work around this, I tried implementing a `JsonSerializable` interface in my `Event` class: ```php class Event implements JsonSerializable { // ... existing code ... public function jsonSerialize() { return [ 'eventDate' => $this->eventDate->format(DateTime::ISO8601) ]; } } ``` With this implementation, I receive the expected output: ```json {"eventDate":"2023-10-01T12:00:00+00:00"} ``` However, I'm concerned about the potential performance implications of implementing `JsonSerializable` for every class that contains `DateTimeImmutable` objects. Is this the best practice for handling this situation, or is there a more efficient way to get the desired serialization format in PHP 8.2? Also, is there any risk of breaking changes in future PHP versions that could affect this behavior? This is part of a larger web app I'm building. Has anyone else encountered this? My development environment is Linux. Any help would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is Linux. What's the correct way to implement this? I'm open to any suggestions.