DTO as SOAP objects

[Lumrenion]

I am trying to use DTOs with the SoapClient. With the classmap config option you can pass PHP classes to the SoapClient like so:

new \SoapClient($wsdl, ['classmap' => 'User' => \App\DTOs\User::class]);

The XSD of my soap server defines a property birthdate as type xs:dateTime inside the ComplexElement User. I wanted to automatically convert this into a Carbon object:

namespace App\DTOs;

use Spatie\LaravelData\Data;

class User extends Data
{
    public ?\Illuminate\Support\Carbon $birthdate = null;
}

But when I try that, I get an exception when doing my soap request:

During class fetch: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot assign string to Property App\DTOs\User::$birthdate of Type ?Illuminate\Support\Carbon

I tried solve this with a __set method, but it obviously does not get called as the property is defined. I wonder, is there a way around this, or any suggestions how I could handle it?

[Lumrenion]

I foud a solution, no need for any magic with getters or setters. You can pass a typemap to the SoapClient to define from and to methods to handle type conversion between PHP and XML:

<?php
namespace Bka\AbsClient\Utility;

use Illuminate\Support\Carbon;

class XmlTypemap
{
    public static array $typemap = [
        [
        "type_ns"  => "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema",
        "type_name" => "dateTime",
        "from_xml"    => [self::class, 'fromXSDDateTime'],
        "to_xml" => [self::class, 'toXSDDateTime']
        ]
    ];

    public static function fromXSDDateTime(string $xml): \DateTimeInterface
    {
        $sxe = simplexml_load_string($xml);
        return new Carbon((string) $sxe);
    }

    public static function toXSDDateTime(null|string|\DateTimeInterface $value): ?string
    {
        if (is_null($value)) {
            return null;
        }
        if (!is_string($value)) {
            $value = $value->format(\DateTimeInterface::ATOM);
        }
        return '<value>' . $value . '</value>';
    }
}

Notice the <value> tags inside toXSDDateTime. It is required that the to method returns something that looks like XML, just like the from method gets passed an XML string. See php/php-src#11725 for further reference.