Or maybe CollectionNormalizers should stop supporting empty Countables

+1 for this :)

WDTY about calling the normalizer on normalizeRawCollection and fully delegate the "PRESERVE_EMPTY_OBJECTS" management to Symfony ?
Once fixed, we will be able to use this symfony/symfony#42240 on symfony 5.4

return $this->normalizer->normalize($this->normalizeRawCollection($object, $format, $context));

I have found a temporary workaround. Add "PRESERVE_EMPTY_OBJECTS" in your entity normalizationContext and declare your property as stdClass instead of array. It will be serialized as empty object instead of empty array.

Once fixed, we will be able to use this symfony/symfony#42240 on symfony 5.4

Wow this PR seems terribly bad for me. It breaks list array at all. I am currently using PRESERVE_EMPTY_OBJECTS in global context and this behaviour feels expected for me

Wow this PR seems terribly bad for me. It breaks list array at all. I am currently using PRESERVE_EMPTY_OBJECTS in global context and this behaviour feels expected for me

About this PR, you shouldn't worry about it :) think it won't break your current behavior. You will just be able to override this for a specific property.

About this PR, you shouldn't worry about it :) think it won't break your current behavior. You will just be able to override this for a specific property.

According to PR ObjectNormalizer will convert all empty arrays to objects, when PRESERVE_EMPTY_OBJECTS enabled. It sounds weird for me and breaks BC.
But yes it's not about my current PR 😄

symfony/symfony#42240 irrelevant. Maybe I should rework this PR to support symfony/symfony#42297 in advance
All should work fine

Added tests

Could you target main?

@soyuka done

You must rebase your branch there are conflicts

Thank :)

Superseded by #4999, thank you!