ManyToOne with FOSUSerBundle ignoring exclusion policy - entity-framework

Question

Building a JSON response for an API type thing, to retrieve a specific set of data that includes a ManyToOne relationship in the entity for my entity that extends FOSUSerBundle's User entity (called Account in my case).
The problem is, the Account entity thats included as a field in the response, is wanted, but I dont want to include all of the password and role type stuff.
I've been browing the internet for a couple hours now, and I've followed many guides on this, and I've cleared my cache every single time, and to no avail; So here's where I ended up:
// app/config/config.yml
jms_serializer:
metadata:
auto_detection: true
directories:
FOSUserBundle:
namespace_prefix: "FOS\\UserBundle"
path: "%kernel.root_dir%/Resources/serializer/FOS"
I've for below I've tried User.Model.yml and Model.User.yml and User.Entity.yml as well in a vain thought that the file name actually matters
// app/Resources/serializer/FOS/Entity.User.yml
FOS\UserBundle\Model\User:
exclusion_policy: ALL
properties:
id:
expose: true
and what I get still looks like this:
{
"status":"ok",
"api_version":"1.0",
"code":200,
"data":{
"video":{
"id":1,
"published":true,
"visibility":true,
"title":"Megaman 2",
"slug":"megaman-2",
"summary":"A rap song about Megaman",
"description":"A rap song\r\nAbout megaman",
"youtube_id":"R6L9bUouDr8",
"date_published":"2014-07-02T14:09:26-0700",
"date_created":"2014-07-02T14:09:26-0700",
"date_updated":"2014-07-02T14:09:26-0700",
"author_id":3,
"author":{
"id":3,
"username":"kharrison",
"username_canonical":"kharrison",
"email":"(sorry private)",
"email_canonical":"(sorry, private)",
"enabled":true,
"salt":"(sorry, private)",
"password":"(sorry, private)",
"last_login":"2014-07-04T15:17:34-0700",
"locked":false,
"expired":false,
"roles":[
"ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN"
],
"credentials_expired":false,
"display_name":"Kyle Harrison",
"slug":"kyle-harrison",
"bio":"Test"
}
}
}
}
The "author" field, is my Account entity thats being run through the JMSSerializer
I want to exclude ALL of that, except the user ID, Display name, and slug.
And finally this is how the API works:
// My/Bundle/Controller/BaseAPIController.php
//......... other code
/**
* #param string $status
* #param integer $code
* #return Response
*/
public function render_api($status, $code)
{
$this->apiResponse->setStatus($status);
$this->apiResponse->setCode($code);
return new Response($this->apiResponse->serialize($this->get('jms_serializer')), $this->apiResponse->getCode(), ["Content-type"=>"application/json"]);
}
//............. other code
and finally, that calls this:
// My/Bundle/Models
class APIResponse {
protected $status;
protected $apiVersion;
protected $code;
protected $data;
public function __construct($apiVersion, $status = "OK", $code = 500)
{
$this->status = $status;
$this->code = $code;
$this->apiVersion = $apiVersion;
$this->data = [];
}
// ... getters and setters
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function serialize($serializer) {
return $serializer->serialize($this, "json");
}
}

Answer 1

I've for below I've tried User.Model.yml and Model.User.yml and
User.Entity.yml as well in a vain thought that the file name actually
matters.
It does matter, actually. It's a concatenation of the namespace and class name. In this case, you're trying to configure the FOS\UserBundle\Model\User class, so the file name should be Model.User.yml. (FOS\UserBundle\ should be excluded from the file name, since you configured it as namespace_prefix in your config.yml)
Also make sure that your Account class doesn't re-declare (overwrite) the properties, as the serializer config only works if you configure it for the class that actually declares the properties.

Answer 2

Ok So, the actual answer, couldn't have been arrived to via the information I provided. But Nic's Answer did lead me towards the solution. The description of how the the serializer looks at and deciphers the config file lead me to the real problem at hand.
This is what I failed to show:
<?php
namespace [PRIVATE]\[PRIVATE]Bundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\User as BaseUser;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\ExclusionPolicy;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Expose;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Groups;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\VirtualProperty;
/**
* Account
*
* #ORM\Table()
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="[PRIVATE]\[PRIVATE]Bundle\Entity\AccountRepository")
*/
class Account extends BaseUser
{
The problem lays with the Alias I provided the FOS\UserBundle\Model\User namespace. I no longer remember why I wrote that that way. However, the moment I remove the Alias and rewrote the extends to resemble this instead:
<?php
namespace [PRIVATE]\[PRIVATE]Bundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\User;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\ExclusionPolicy;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Expose;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\Groups;
use JMS\Serializer\Annotation\VirtualProperty;
/**
* Account
*
* #ORM\Table()
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="[PRIVATE]\[PRIVATE]Bundle\Entity\AccountRepository")
*/
class Account extends User
{
combined with the new correct filename from Nic's answer, the config based Exclusion policy for JMSSerializerBundle totally kicks in, and every instance of FOSUserBundle's items are now completely hidden, except for the fields I've now explicitly told it to expose.
This is exactly what I wanted :)
Thanks everyone for your help! Cheers
~k

Answer 3

I'm not sure it's the exact way you want it, more a way around:
way around 1: Select only the properties you want (via the entity manager) and then serialize the array obtained.
It's what I do with what I call my API (which is not a class as you but controllers)