Join columns by referencedColumnName that is not primary key - id - symfony

Question

I am rookie in Symfony Doctrine and need some help with Join entities.
Normally Column are joins by primary key ID
/**
* User
*
* #ORM\Table(name="users")
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="MainBundle\Repository\UserRepository")
* UniqueEntity("email", message="Account with email already exists.")
*/
class User implements AdvancedUserInterface, \Serializable
{
/**
* #var \MainBundle\Entity\PersonDetails
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="MainBundle\Entity\Person")
* #ORM\JoinColumns({
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="person_details_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
* })
*/
private $personDetails = null;
This is ok.
But problem is that I want to Join two columns in Relation OneToOne by id field in User Entity
/**
* User
*
* #ORM\Table(name="users")
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="MainBundle\Repository\UserRepository")
* UniqueEntity("email", message="Account with email already exists.")
*/
class User implements AdvancedUserInterface, \Serializable
{
/**
* #var \MainBundle\Entity\PersonDetails
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="MainBundle\Entity\Person")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="id", referencedColumnName="user_id", nullable=true)
* })
*/
private $personDetails = null;
When I try to join columns on this way I get error
Missing value for primary key id on MainBundle\Entity\PersonDetails
Is it possible to index other field than id or what I trying to do is impossible?
Thanks guys.

Answer 1

You have mixed up the column-name and the field-name that shall be referenced in your #JoinColumn declaration.
#JoinColumn(name="id", referencedColumnName="user_id")
This way Doctrine looks for a field/property named user_id on your User entity. I guess you want the column in the join-table to be named user_id and the entries being id's of the User entity.
UserDetail
/**
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class UserDetail
{
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(
* targetEntity="User",
* inversedBy="details"
* )
* #ORM\JoinColumn(
* name="user_id",
* referencedColumnName="id"
* )
*/
protected $user;
public function setUser(User $user)
{
$this->user = $user;
return $this;
}
/** #ORM\Column() */
protected $key;
/** #ORM\Column() */
protected $value;
public function __construct($key, $value)
{
$this->key = $key;
$this->value = $value;
}
User
class User
{
/**
* #ORM\Id()
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
protected $id;
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(
* targetEntity="UserDetail",
* mappedBy="user",
* cascade={
* "persist",
* "remove",
* "merge"
* },
* orphanRemoval=true
* )
*/
protected $details;
public function __construct()
{
$this->details = new ArrayCollection();
}
public function addDetail(UserDetail $detail)
{
$detail->setUser($this);
$this->details->add($detail);
return $this;
}
Now if you add a detail to your User like this and persist/flush afterwards:
$user->addDetail(new UserDetail('Height', '173cm'));
This will result in a join-colum in the user_detail table that looks like this:
| key | value | user_id |
|---------------|-----------|---------|
| Height | 173cm | 1 |

Answer 2

Citing Doctrine documentation:
It is not possible to use join columns pointing to non-primary keys.
Doctrine will think these are the primary keys and create lazy-loading
proxies with the data, which can lead to unexpected results. Doctrine
can for performance reasons not validate the correctness of this
settings at runtime but only through the Validate Schema command.
I had the same problem, I solved it by performing the mapping only to fields that are primary key. If I needed to get the related entities by other fields, I implemented methods in the Entity repository.