Weird Doctrine Entity Behaviour - symfony

Question

I have two entities, Invoice and InvoiceItem definined as follows in yml.
Invoice.orm.yml
AppBundle\Entity\Invoice:
type: entity
table: invoices
repositoryClass: AppBundle\Repository\InvoiceRepository
fields:
id:
id: true
type: integer
generator:
strategy: AUTO
......
oneToMany:
items:
targetEntity: InvoiceItem
mappedBy: invoice
deductions:
targetEntity: InvoiceDeduction
mappedBy: invoice
payments:
targetEntity: InvoicePayment
mappedBy: invoice
InvoiceItem.orm.yml
AppBundle\Entity\InvoiceItem:
type: entity
table: invoice_items
repositoryClass: AppBundle\Repository\InvoiceItemRepository
fields:
id:
id: true
type: integer
generator:
strategy: AUTO
....
manyToOne:
invoice:
targetEntity: Invoice
inversedBy: items
joinColumn:
invoice_id:
referencedColumnName: id
onDelete: CASCADE
My controller receives invoice details and saves the elements as illustrated below
public function createInvoiceAction(Request $request)
{
....
$invoice = new Invoice();
$invoice->setReference($ref);
$invoice->setInvoiceDate(\DateTime::createFromFormat('d/m/Y',$request->query->get('invoiceDate')));
$invoice->setDescription($request->query->get('summary'));
$invoice->setAttn($request->query->get('att'));
$invoice->setIsVatable($request->query->get('vattable') == 'true' ? 1 : 0);
$invoice->setAdditionalInstructions($request->query->get('additional'));
$invoice->setJob($job);
$invoice->setCurrency($request->query->get('currency'));
$invoice->setGeneratedBy($createdBy);
$invoice->setFile($filename);
$job->setStatus('Invoiced');
$em->persist($invoice);
$em->persist($job);
$em->flush();
$items = $request->query->get('items');
for($i=0;$i<count($items);$i++)
{
if($items[$i]['description']!= '' && $items[$i]['amount'] != '')
{
$item = new InvoiceItem();
$item->setDescription($items[$i]['description']);
$item->setAmount($items[$i]['amount']);
$item->setInvoice($invoice);
$em->persist($item);
$em->flush();
}
}
$deductions = $request->query->get('deductions');
for($i=0;$i<count($deductions);$i++)
{
if($deductions[$i]['description'] != '' && $deductions[$i]['value'] != '')
{
$deduction = new InvoiceDeduction();
$deduction->setDescription($deductions[$i]['description']);
$deduction->setValue($deductions[$i]['value']);
$deduction->setIsPercentage($deductions[$i]['isPercentage'] == 'true' ? 1 : 0);
$deduction->setInvoice($invoice);
$em->persist($deduction);
$em->flush();
}
}
$html = $this->renderView('AppBundle:Default:invoice.html.twig', array('invoice' => $invoice));
return new Response(
$html
);
}
invoice.html.twig which renders the invoice details including items and deductions.
.....
{% for item in invoice.items %}
<tr>
<td>{{ loop.index }}</td>
<td>{{ item.description }}</td>
<td>{{ item.amount|number_format(0, '', ',') }}</td>
</tr>
{% endfor %}
.....
The challenge I'm having is that the $invoice object sent to the template is has no items or deductions which are supposed to be collections. I've checked in the database and can confirm that the items and deductions are persisted into the respective tables so I don't understand why there are no invoice.items or invoice.deductions in the tables.
Out of desperation I flushed after every InvoiceItem object creation thinking that maybe the template was rendered before the persist transaction was completed but this didn't help either.

Answer 1

UPDATE:
Atleast one other error I've spotted is the onDelete option being defined under joinColumn. It should be:
manyToOne:
invoice:
targetEntity: Invoice
inversedBy: items
joinColumn:
invoice_id:
referencedColumnName: id
onDelete: CASCADE
--------
If you are having this problem only when the view is rendered during createInvoiceAction, then the problem might be that since you don't actually add the InvoiceItem(s) to the Invoice object via a method called something like addItem() (the naming depends on how you name the relation in the invoice entity), those items might only be present in the Invoice entity the next time you query the invoice, because even though you have set the invoice of each item, it might be that if those entities were created just now, doctrine might not be able to retrieve them using the proxy classes. So the solution would be simple: use the addItem method on invoice entity to add the items to the invoice and then don't forget to add the logic that sets the invoice for the given item inside that method
public function addItem(InvoiceItem $item)
{
$item->setInvoice($this);
$this->items[] = $item;
return $this;
}
However if this problem is still present the next time you query for the already persisted invoice and its items, I would suggest you check whether the object actually contains the getter methods and you aren't simply trying to access the items via a public property. In other words inside the invoice class the property named items should be defined as private, and you should have a getItems() method, which retrieves the items.
Objects used with doctrine must have these methods, since it overrides the logic inside those methods using its proxy classes in order to add code that would also send out the query to retrieve the, in your case, InvoiceItem(s) from the database and place them inside of the private property of the object and only then run the getter code inside of your class. Without these methods private properties would stay empty, since there is no other way for doctrine to retrieve them form the database for you (unless maybe fetch: "EAGER").