Symfony2 - How can I simplify this querybuilder? - symfony

Question

I have a working queryBuilder that gets posts by category and excludes the one being shown and sets a max limit.
Question: How can I simplify this queryBuilder?
In the query, I am pretty sure I don't need to join the 2 tables (category/post connected with a OneToMany/ManyToOne relationship) and am setting $category in the controller, is there a better way of refactoring this?
queryBuilder
public function getRelatedPosts($exceptPost, $limit, $category)
{
return $this
->createQueryBuilder('post')
->leftJoin('post.category','category')
->where('post != :exceptPost')
->setParameter('exceptPost', $exceptPost)
->andWhere('category = :category')
->setParameter('category', $category)
->orderBy('post.createdAt', 'DESC')
->setMaxResults($limit)
->getQuery()
->execute();
}
controller
public function showAction($slug)
{
$post = $this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Post')
->findOneBy(array(
'slug' => $slug
));
if (null === $post) {
throw $this->createNotFoundException('Post was not found');
}
$category = $post->getCategory();
$posts = $this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Post')
->getRelatedPosts($post, 4, $category);
return array(
'post' => $post,
'posts' => $posts
);
}
updated queryBuilder
public function getRelatedPosts($exceptPost, $limit, $category)
{
return $this
->createQueryBuilder('post')
->where('post != :exceptPost')
->andWhere('post.category = :category')
->setParameter('exceptPost', $exceptPost)
->setParameter('category', $category)
->orderBy('post.createdAt', 'DESC')
->setMaxResults($limit)
->getQuery()
->execute();
}

Answer 1

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for but you may want something like this:
Controller
public function showAction($slug)
{
$post = $this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Post')
->findOneBy(array(
'slug' => $slug
));
if (null === $post) {
throw $this->createNotFoundException('Post was not found');
}
$posts = $this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Post')
->getRelatedPosts($post, 4);
return array(
'post' => $post,
'posts' => $posts
);
}
Repository
public function getRelatedPosts($exceptPost, $limit)
{
return $this
->createQueryBuilder('post')
->where('post.id != :exceptPost')
->andWhere('post.category = :category')
->setParameter('exceptPost', $exceptPost->getId())
->setParameter('category', $exceptPost->getCategory()->getId())
->orderBy('post.createdAt', 'DESC')
->setMaxResults($limit)
->getQuery()
->getResult();
}
You can also build this in a join query of post table with itself or SELECT ... IN (...); if you are interested