Symfony - ArrayCollection - Update or Create - symfony

Question

Symfony 4.3
Goal : import a CSV listing employees/company with doctrine and save it into the DB.
I have the Entity company :
<?php
// src/Entity/Company.php
class Company
{
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="App\Entity\Employee", mappedBy="company")
*/
private $employees;
public function __construct()
{
$this->employees = new ArrayCollection();
}
public function getEmployees()
{
return $this->employees;
}
and the Employee entity :
<?php
// src/Entity/Employee.php
class Employee
{
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Company", inversedBy="employees")
*/
private $company;
public function getCompany()
{
return $this->company;
}
public function setCompany(?Company $company)
{
$this->company = $company;
return $this;
}
Below is my loop for each line of the CSV being imported :
<?php
// $csv = array made from the CSV file
// e.g. $csv[0]['employee_name'] = "John Doe"
// e.g. $csv[0]['employee_mail'] = "john.doe#bmw.com"
// e.g. $csv[0]['employee_company_name'] = "BMW"
// e.g. $csv[0]['employee_company_id'] = 77
foreach($csv as $key => $value)
{
if($company = $this->em->getRepository(Company::class)->find($value['employee_company_id']))
{
// if the employee doest not exist, create it
// IN MY TESTS, HERE IS MY PROBLEM
// DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOOP INSIDE THE EMPLOYEES LIST USING the MAIL
if ($company->getEmployees()->contains($value['employee_mail']))
{
// This employee for this company exists, let's update it
}
else
{
// This employee for this company does not exist, let's create it
}
}
else
{
// Create the company
}
I don't know how to loop inside the company employees list, in order to decide if I have to edit (employee already exists) or create a new employee. Maybe I should not use the ArrayCollection::contains method ?

Answer 1

As Employees is an Doctrine ArrayCollection, you can use the exists method on it. This method accepts a closure as argument which loops over all elements in the collection and returns true when the condition matches.
if ($company->getEmployees()->exists(function ($key, Employee $employee) use ($value) {
return $employee->getEmail() === $value['employee_mail'];
})) {
// Employee exists, update
} else {
// Employee does not exist
}
Alternatively, if you want to create/update the record right away, you can do the following. This returns the Employee if it exists, or create a new Employee object if it doesn't
$employee = $company
->getEmployees()
->filter(function (Employee $employee) use ($value) {
return $employee->getEmail() === $value['employee_mail'];
})
->first() ?? new Employee();

Answer 2

the naive approach would be to just look in the employee repository.
$employee = $em->getRepository(Employee::class)->findOneBy([
'company' => $company,
'email' => $value['employee_mail'],
]);
if($employee) {
// exists -> update
} else {
// create
}
Depending on the company-employee-ratio, it might be better to cycle through the company's employees instead:
$employee = null;
foreach($company->getEmployees() as $_employee) {
if($_employee->getEmail() == $value['employee_mail']) {
$employee = $_employee;
break; // short circuit the loop
}
}
// rest is the same
If there are is very large number of employees in your csv and/or the database, it might be even better to skip the ORM alltogether and go straight to the database instead. Otherwise, you might want to clear the entity manager once in a while, if you have a huge database / csv.

Answer 3

You should store first your list of employees :
$employees = $company->getEmployees()
then you loop inside $employees :
foreach($employees as $employee ) //supposedly you have 'email' property
{
if ($employee->getEmail() == $value['employee_mail'])
{
//your code here
}
}
don't forget to add this :
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="App\Entity\Employee", mappedBy="company", fetch="EAGER")
Update :
$qb = $repository->createQueryBuilder('a')
->where(':employee_mail OF a.emplyee_email')
->setParameter('employee_mail ', $value['employee_mail']);
->andWhere(':comapanyId MEMBER OF a.company_id');
->setParameter('comapanyId ', $value['employee_company_id']);
->getQuery()
->execute()
this will return null if the employee does not exist in the company, you should implement this as you need in your code.