FOS Bundle User - multiple roles - symfony

Question

I'm exploring the possibilities of FOS Bundle User.
Thanks to Knpuniversity (https://knpuniversity.com/screencast/fosuserbundle/roles-canonical-fields) I discovered this good bundle to manage users.
In my case I also need multiple roles BUUUUUUT I don't want to save it with an array of roles in a field from user table. My intention is to use more tables with a relation 'n' to 'm' where 1 user have 'n' roles and 1 role can be used by 'n' users also.
So instead of having one table to manage users and roles, I will need one table for users, one table for roles and a last one to make the relationship n-m between them. I need that because I will use this structure for others functionalities and saving the roles as an array... will create more problems than solve... in my case.
What you propose to achieve that?
Perhaps another bundle?
Perhaps a simple solution to adapt the bundle to my requirements?
What do you think I could do?

Answer 1

With the FOSUserBundle indeed you can manage all kind of roles through the groups class that this bundle creates.
In the normal flow from symfony these groups they doesn't exist by default. Its an extra feature that provides this bundle, but it helps you to manage better the roles for the users.

Answer 2

This is what I am doing and works pretty well for me:
I have a User,Role and a Group entities
User Entity
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\User as BaseUser;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="fos_user")
*/
class User extends BaseUser
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
protected $id;
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
// your own logic
}
}
Group Entity
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\Group as BaseGroup;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="fos_group")
*/
class Group extends BaseGroup
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
protected $id;
}
all this is from FOS docs
Now the roles by default comes as array but symfony provides a Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Role\Role class to extend from it.
so your role class should look like this:
Role Entity
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Role\Role as BaseRol;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="fos_role")
*/
class Role extends BaseRol
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
protected $id;
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
// your own logic
}
}
To do the magic you just need to add the mapping information as follow.
To support groups in users entities
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="path/to/my/groupEntity")
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="join_table_name",
* joinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="join_column_name_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
* inverseJoinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="join_column_name_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
* )
*/
protected $groups;
To support roles in both Group and User entity
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="path/to/my/roleEntity")
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="join_table_name",
* joinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="join_column_name_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
* inverseJoinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="join_column_name_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
* )
*/
protected $roles;
After that update your database and you are ready to go.

Answer 3

Finally what I did is use the functionality from the FOSUserBunlde using roles and groups where each role is used as permissions to execute controller and the groups to manage easily all the roles from a user.

Answer 4

I would create a new UserManager class extending the FosUserManager class overriding the role related methods. But not sure about if it's worthy or not. Also you will have to create a middle plain object that extends from the FosUserBundle User model and then use it to create yor user Entity. In this middle object you will have to change the way Roles are stored.
Seriously I'm not sure of this is better than starting your own user management from scratch.