Adding data to returned Entities in Symfony - symfony

Question

Question really relates to best practice and whether what I have in my head is possible. I am querying for a collection of Member entities using a Repository function, for example (simplified)
/**
* #return Query
*/
public function findAllMembersOrderedByNameResult()
{
return $this->createQueryBuilder('m')
->orderBy('m.lastName', 'ASC')
->getQuery()
->getResult()
;
}
I am calling this in my Controller:
$members = $em->getRepository(Member::class)->findAllMembersOrderedByNameResult();
Now I am passing the result this to my twig template file and can loop through this and display information about each member as part of a foreach loop:
{% for member in members %}
{{member.firstName}}
{% endfor %}
This obviously works fine, however I have a need now to add some additional data to each member to pass to the twig template. So for example using the DateOfBirth in the Member entity I want to run this through a function to determine the age of the member to display in the Twig template. So at the moment I am making this call in the Controller, and then passing it over to the template by creating a MembersArray, looping through the returned $members Collection and adding in the new age and whole Member result as two separate values in the array, for example:
foreach($members as $member)
{
$membersArray[] = array(
'member' => $member,
'age' => $age
)
}
This does work, however in my Twig template I now have to use
{% for member in membersArray %}
{{member.member.firstName}}
{{member.age}
{% endfor %}
It would be much nicer to be able to just add age into the Collection without creating the array so I can just use member.firstName and member.age but for the life of me can't find a way how without having to loop through all values manually and set them to a new array, which seems a huge waste of code.
I will want to add more than just age, this is just a simplified example. Using Symfony 4.4 and PHP 7.3 in case anything that would help requires it
Edit: Entity structure as requested (cutdown):
namespace App\Entity;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="App\Repository\MemberRepository")
*/
class Member
{
/**
* #ORM\Id()
* #ORM\GeneratedValue()
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="string", length=255, nullable=true)
*/
private $firstName;
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="date", nullable=true)
*/
private $dateOfBirth;
...

Answer 1

The simplest way would be adding custom getter methods to an entity itself, like:
public function getAge()
{
return (new DateTime())->diff($this->dateOfBirth)->y;
}
Then you can calculate the age in a twig template by calling member.age.
But usually, it's not recommended to have any logic in an entity itself.
Another way is using twig itself to format data. I would say it is preferable with the age example. Because age looks more like the view format of the dataOfBirth field than extra data, you can use a twig filter to calculate that. The built-in like {{ date().diff(member.dateOfBirgth)).format('%y') }}, or define a custom one with a twig extension, so the syntax would be more straightforward, like {{ member.dateOfBirgth|age }} or even {{ member|age }}.
In case you have to reuse formatting not only in twig but also in some services and don't want to put logic into an entity - you can decouple twig extension from the previous example to use the shared service that is responsible for formatting age. Other parts of the system can use the same formatting service.
Also, it's a common practice to put new methods to work with an entity to a custom entity manager service, like MemberManager. Usually, we use entity manager to manipulate entities, but you can add there the method to format age, like MemberManager->getAge($member). This would violate the single responsibility principle, so I can't recommend it.
If you are looking for extending doctrine entities with some extra methods with listeners or so, it's not possible by doctrine design. Anyway, it's the most, not obvious way.
To summarise, in most cases, when the custom function can be considered as a formatting one, I would recommend using the second option, with decoupling it to the third option whenever you have to reuse the formatting code. But if the project isn't complex, the first option also worth checking, as it's the simplest one.