How to use the serializer for saving snapshot of complex entities

I’m working on a Symfony project where I have an entity called Richiesta that contains many nested relationships, some of which are OneToMany, ManyToOne, and ManyToMany associations.

At a certain point in the process, I need to serialize all the data from the Richiesta entity (including its related entities) and save it as JSON in a Snapshot table in the database.

Later, I need to deserialize that JSON and reconstruct the Richiesta entity, including all its relationships, i need the result as if I were using $repository->find(). (i.e., a complete entity with all its relationships).

I’m using Symfony’s SerializerInterface, but I’m having trouble handling all the nested relationships correctly during deserialization.

Important:
I do not want to use DTOs because I need all the methods (e.g., custom constructors, setters, and domain logic) that are defined directly within the entity itself. I need the deserialized object to be a full Richiesta entity with all its original methods intact.

Main questions:

1. How can I properly serialize an entity with nested relationships in Symfony so that I can deserialize it back into a full entity?

2. Is there a way to ensure that deserialization includes all the nested relationships, similar to how the find() method from a repository works?

3. What are the best practices for handling complex entities during serialization/deserialization in Symfony, especially when dealing with nested relationships?

Context

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