Symfony 6 + API Platform - Update existing entity while posting new entity

I have the following use case:

In my user table I have a user that has been soft deleted and has a unique constraint with the email field.

The user does a sign up again with the same e-mail. Via API Platform POST request. My goal is to check in that POST request if the user existed, and recover it from the trash.

I've tried the following 2 options:

Option 1: Hook into the deserialise process of API Platform

While deserialising in the POST request I have tried to check if the user existed and add the user ID to the deserialised-data array.

But the problem is that API Platform says that an UPDATE is not possible during a POST request.

Option 2: check in the prePersist() in Doctrine

I tried the following:

public function prePersist(PrePersistEventArgs $args): void
{
    $entity = $args->getObject();

    // it must be a user!
    if (!$entity instanceof User) {
       return;
    }

    // check for old user
    $existing = $this->userRepository->findDeletedUser($entity);
    if (!empty($existing)) {
       $this->em->detach($entity);
       $entity = $this->userRepository->recoverUser($existing, $entity);
    }
    

   // continue on the normal sign up stuff...
   
}

But this gives me a unique constraint error that the user already exists.

How can I solve this?

Just use the state processor

Smth like that:

final class SignUpStateProcessor implements ProcessorInterface
{
    /**
     * @param \App\ApiResource\SignUp $signUp
     */
    public function process(
        mixed $signUp,
        Operation $operation,
        ?array $uriVariables = null,
        ?array $context = null
    ): SignUp {
        $existing = $this->userRepository->findDeletedUser($signUp);
        if ($existing !== null) {
            return $this->userRepository->recoverUser($existing, $signUp);
        }

        $this->entityManager->persist($signUp);
        $this->entityManager->flush();

        return $signUp;
    }
}