Symfony2 best practices for stay DRY - symfony

Question

I'm new to Symfony2. I have to learn it for my new job (it starts this monday). Before that, I used a lot CodeIgniter... so this change a bit.
After reading tons of documentations, tuts, best practices ... create my Own intranet for testing (customers has websites, websites has accesses, accesses has website, website has category, accesses has accesscategory) I still have some questions.
First Question :
When you have a website with frontend and backend you have all the time some repetitives actions like :
- create new entity
- read entity
- update entity
- delete entity
...
In CI, I create a BaseController and a BaseModel and with some extends, I was OK.
This practice is still OK for Symfony 2 or do Symfony have another way to handle that ?
Like AppBundle\Controller\BaseController extended by a AppBundle\Controller\AdminController (and FrontController) extended by AppBundle\Controller\MyEntityController ?
Because Actually, each time, in each controller I have the same code. When I edit an entity (for example), it's the same process : load the entity by id, throw exception if no entity, create and hydrate the form, handleRequest the post and valid the form, reidrect or display the view... but... I always cut/paste the same code... aweful T__T
So I'm searching for the best way to handle that
** Second Question : **
What is the best and elegent way to work with the DoctrineManager ?
Do I have to call it, each time in my actions ? $em = $this->get... or, can I create something like MyEntityManager which call the EntityManager and the repository of my entity ?
Actually, this is what I do :
I create an abstract AppBundle\Manager\BaseManager with loadAndFlush
<?php
namespace AppBundle\Manager;
abstract class BaseManager
{
protected function persistAndFlush($entity)
{
$this->em->persist($entity);
$this->em->flush();
}
}
Then, for each Entity, I create his own manager :
<?php
namespace AppBundle\Manager;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
use AppBundle\Manager\BaseManager;
use AppBundle\Entity\Customer;
class CustomerManager extends BaseManager
{
/**
* #var EntityManager
*/
protected $em;
/**
* #param EntityManager $em
*/
public function __construct(EntityManager $em)
{
$this->em = $em;
}
/**
* #param $customerId
* #return null|object
*/
public function loadCustomer($customerId)
{
return $this->getRepository()
->findOneBy(array('id' => $customerId));
}
/**
* #param Customer $customer
*/
public function saveCustomer(Customer $customer)
{
$this->persistAndFlush($customer);
}
/**
* #return \Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository
*/
public function getRepository()
{
return $this->em->getRepository('AppBundle:Customer');
}
}
Then, I define this manager as a service :
parameters:
app.customer_manager.class: AppBundle\Manager\CustomerManager
services:
app.customer_manager:
class: %app.customer_manager.class%
arguments: [#doctrine.orm.entity_manager]
And Then I use the service in my Controller :
/**
* #Route("/edit/{customerId}", name="customer_edit")
* #Security("has_role('ROLE_ADMIN')")
*/
public function editAction($customerId, Request $request)
{
if (!$customer = $this->get('app.customer_manager')->loadCustomer($customerId)) {
throw new NotFoundHttpException($this->get('translator')->trans('This customer does not exist.'));
}
$form = $this->get('form.factory')->create(new CustomerType(), $customer);
if($form->handleRequest($request)->isValid()) {
$this->get('app.customer_manager')->saveCustomer($customer);
$request->getSession()->getFlashBag()->add('notice', 'Client bien enregistré.');
return $this->redirect(
$this->generateUrl(
'customer_show', array(
'customerId' => $customer->getId()
)
)
);
}
return $this->render('default/customer/add.html.twig', array(
'form' => $form->createView(),
'customer' => $customer
));
}
Is it a good practice, is it too complicated ? Is there any better other way to process in symfony ?

Answer 1

For first question Symfony2 provides CRUD Generator, take a look at this.
For second one you should use Repository Pattern provided by framework, for more information about this checkout following links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649690.aspx
http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/doctrine.html#custom-repository-classes