Transforming DTO Data

You can convert your DTO to some formats:

To array

$dto = new UserDTO([
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => '[e-mail]',
    'password' => 's3CreT!@1a2B',
]);

$dto->toArray();
// [
//     "name" => "John Doe",
//     "email" => "[e-mail]",
//     "password" => "s3CreT!@1a2B",
// ]

To JSON string

$dto = new UserDTO([
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => '[e-mail]',
    'password' => 's3CreT!@1a2B',
]);

$dto->toJson();
// '{"name":"John Doe","email":"[e-mail]","password":"s3CreT!@1a2B"}'

$dto->toPrettyJson(); // OR LIKE THIS
// {
//     "name": "John Doe",
//     "email": "[e-mail]",
//     "password": "s3CreT!@1a2B"
// }

To Eloquent Model

$dto = new UserDTO([
    'name' => 'John Doe',
    'email' => '[e-mail]',
    'password' => 's3CreT!@1a2B',
]);

$dto->toModel(\App\Models\User::class);
// App\Models\User {#3776
//     name: "John Doe",
//     email: "[e-mail]",
//     password: "s3CreT!@1a2B",
// }

Custom transforming

If you want to build your own Data Transformer, you can use the buildDataForExport() method to retrieve the validated data with your custom mappings.

public function toObject(): object
{
    return (object) $this->buildDataForExport();
}

Transforming Nested Data

Be aware that when transforming the DTO, all the properties are also going to be transformed:

Scalar Data Type and Array properties will preserve their values.

stdClass properties will be transformed into arrays using type casting.

UnitEnum properties are going to be transformed into the case name.

BackedEnum properties are going to be transformed into the case value.

Carbon and CarbonImmutable properties are going to be transformed into strings using the ->toISOString() method.

Collection, Model and DTO properties will have their nested data transformed using the same logic as above.