Automatic create objects

[TheDevick]

Hello!

I’m working with entities that use Value Objects and dates in their constructors, and I wondered whether Foundry could support automatic instantiation of values passed to factories.

For example, imagine an entity like this:

<?php

namespace App\Entity;

use App\ValueObject\KilowattHour;

class Generation
{
    public function __construct(
        public KilowattHour $energy,
        public \DateTimeImmutable $date,
    ) {
    }
}

Currently, creating an instance manually looks like this:

<?php

use App\Entity\Generation;
use App\ValueObject\KilowattHour;

$generation = new Generation(
    new KilowattHour(10),
    new \DateTimeImmutable('2025-01-01'),
);

And with Foundry:

<?php

use App\Factory\GenerationFactory;
use App\ValueObject\KilowattHour;

$generation = GenerationFactory::createOne([
    'energy' => new KilowattHour(10),
    'date' => new \DateTimeImmutable('2025-01-01'),
]);

It would be great if Foundry could automatically instantiate the supported objects.

Something like:

<?php

use App\Factory\GenerationFactory;

$generation = GenerationFactory::createOne([
    'energy' => 10,
    'date' => '2025-01-01',
]);

Where Foundry would internally resolve:

• 10 -> new KilowattHour(10)
• '2025-01-01' -> new \DateTimeImmutable('2025-01-01')

[nikophil]

Hello,

I'm a bit skeptikal about this: I'm afraid this implies too much magic

and what about if your KilowattHour value object needs two properties to initialize? we'd pass an array?

you can achieve more or less what you want with a little bit of boilerplate:

class GenerationFactory extends ObjectFactory
{
    public static fromScalars(int $enevergy, string $date): Generation;
}

or you could leverage "before instantiate" hook:

class GenerationFactory extends ObjectFactory
{
	protected function initialize(): static
	{
	    return $this
			->beforeInstantiate(function(array $parameters): array {
			        if (is_int($parameters['energy'])) {
                       $parameters['energy'] = new KilowattHour($parameters['energy']);
                   }

                   // same for the date
			
			        return $parameters;
			    })
	    ;
	}
}

you could even do this in a more generic way using global hooks, still by leveraging the before instantiate hook

WDYT?