This PR was merged into the 2.8 branch.

Discussion
----------

[Serializer] Support for array denormalization

| Q             | A
| ------------- | ---
| Bug fix?      | no
| New feature?  | yes
| BC breaks?    | no
| Deprecations? | no
| Tests pass?   | yes
| Fixed tickets | none
| License       | MIT
| Doc PR        | none (yet)

This is a rebase of #14343 against the 2.8 branch.

I had to implement a couple of API endpoints that receive data as JSON-serialized arrays of objects. The current implementation of the Serializer component is capable of serializing such arrays, but so far this operation is a one-way-road. This PR is an attempt to change this.

## Demo
```php
class Dummy
{
    public $foo;
    public $bar;

    public function __construct($foo = null, $bar = null)
    {
        $this->foo = $foo;
        $this->bar = $bar;
    }
}

$serializer = new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Serializer(
    array(
        new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\PropertyNormalizer(),
        new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\ArrayDenormalizer()
    ),
    array(
        new \Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\JsonEncoder()
    )
);

$json = $serializer->serialize(
    array(
        new Dummy('one', 'two'),
        new Dummy('three', 'four')
    ),
    'json'
);

echo $json . "\n\n";

// Deserialize the JSON string, so we get back to where we started from.
$data = $serializer->deserialize($json, 'Dummy[]', 'json');

var_dump($data);
```

By appending `[]` to the type parameter, you indicate that you expect to deserialize an array of objects of the given type. This is the same notation that phpDocumentor uses to indicate collections. The denormalization of the array is implemented recursively: The denormalizer simply calls `Serializer::denormalize()` on each element of the array. This way, the ArrayDenormalizer can be combined with any other denormalizer.

## Side effects

For this implementation, I had to touch `GetSetMethodNormalizer`, `PropertyNormalizer` and `CustomNormalizer`. Those classes expected `supportsDenormalization` to be called with a valid class in the `$type` parameter. Instead of throwing a reflection exception, they now simply return false. I'm not exactly sure, if this is should be considered to be a BC break.

This implementation violates the `SerializerInterface` which declared `deserialize()` to always return an object. But imho, the assumption that serialized data always represents an object is too restrictive anyway. Also, this declaration is not consistent with the `serialize()` method which accepts `mixed` as input type for the data to serialize.

## Other PRs

I've found an older PR adressing this issue, #12066. That PR was closed because the contributor did not reply to feedback.

Commits
-------

0573f28 Support for array denormalization.

This PR was merged into the 2.6 branch.

Discussion
----------

[Serializer] [2.6] Code style

| Q             | A
| ------------- | ---
| Bug fix?      | no
| New feature?  | no
| BC breaks?    | no
| Deprecations? | no
| Tests pass?   | yes
| Fixed tickets | none
| License       | MIT
| Doc PR        | none

This PR fixes some minor code style issues fabbot discovered while I was working on PR #14756.

Commits
-------

864136a Code style

This PR was squashed before being merged into the 2.8 branch (closes #5360).

Discussion
----------

[Serializer] Array Denormalization

| Q             | A
| ------------- | ---
| Doc fix?      | no
| New docs?     | yes (symfony/symfony#14756)
| Applies to    | 2.8
| Fixed tickets | none

This PR adds documentation for the new `ArrayDenormalizer` class to the serializer documentation.

Commits
-------

9718c14 [Serializer] Array Denormalization