I'm using SF2 and Doctrine2.
I have an Entity Wheel which have a ManyToOne relationship with the Entity Car.
I want to do something like this in a service:
$car_id = 1;
$wheel = new Wheel();
$wheel->setCarId($car_id);
In other terms, I want to be able to link Wheel and Car just by using Car's id, without getting the full object (because I don't need it: I only need only the id and I already have it).
How can I do that?
Get a reference to the car
$carReference = $entityManager->getReference('MyBundle:Car',$carId);
$wheel->setCar($carReference);
Keep in mind that the O in ORM stands for Object. Try to get out of the habit of thinking about database table id's.
Related
Let's say I have a Setting entity with some fields like IntValue, dateValue, stringValue and some linked entities, like countries (ManyToMany to entity Country), languages (ManyToMany to Language) etc.
Settings are created by users and assigned to specific objects (not important here, but I wanted to clarify).
Now I suddenly need to have UserDefaultSetting, which will be the same, but with additional user field (ManyToOne to User entity).
I tried to extend existing Setting entity class with one more field added. The problem is, as I looked at the schema update SQL, it created new table for the new entity, but without all the tables needed to ORM connections (mostly ManyToMany). Just one table with "scalar" fields.
So previously I've had setting table with int_value, date_value etc. but also setting_country and setting_language tables, linking ManyToMany relations. After creating child entity, Doctrine created only user_default_setting table with int_value, date_value etc. and additionally user_id column, but I can't see any relation/link tables.
I know I should've been do it with abstract base entity class, but at the time I started, I didn't know that and now part of the project is on production (don't look at me like that, I blame the client) and I don't want to change that "base" class now. Can I inherit everything from non-abstract entity class in a way it will work?
UPDATE: everything explained. See Cerad's comment. Thanks!
I have different entities like:
Element, Status, Action, Contributor ...
And I need to create an entity, let say Synonym, which can be related to one of these previous entities
My entity Synonym, can be a synonym of the entity Element or Status or Action ...
I try to use a MappedSuperclass but I'm really lost.
I think this kind of relation is common and must be easy to create with doctrine but I can't find the good way.
I am building a social website and I am laying out how the feed will work. I want to use the answer here: How to implement the activity stream in a social network and implement the database design mentioned:
id
user_id (int)
activity_type (tinyint)
source_id (int)
parent_id (int)
parent_type (tinyint)
time (datetime but a smaller type like int would be better)
The problem is I don't know how I would map the source_id based off activity_type. If a user registers, I want the source_id to be the user that registered. If someone creates a group the source_id will be the group. I know I can just use simple IDs without keys I just wanted to know if Symfony had some sort of way to do this built in.
If I fetch the feed and the activity_type is user_register I would like to be able to do this to get the source (user) without running an additional query:
$feedEntity->getSource()->getUsername(); //getSource() being the User entity
And if the source_typeis "user_post":
$feedEntity->getSource()->getMessage(); //getSource() being the UserPost entity
I basically just want to find the best way to store this data and make it the fastest.
Not easy to deal with doctrine and i think it cannot achieved 100% automatically
However, the keyword is table inheritance
http://docs.doctrine-project.org/en/2.0.x/reference/inheritance-mapping.html#single-table-inheritance
I think you could achieve your goal by doing something like this :
You create a discriminator map by the type column of the table which tells doctrine to load this entity a UserSource (for example)
This UserSource can be an own entity (can be inherited from a base class if you want) where you can decide to map the source_id column to the real User Entity
You can use instanceof matching against the namespace of the different entities mapped inside your discriminator map to define different behaviours for the different sources
Let's say there is an entity called Staff.
It has a number of persistent attributes, such as:
- Name
- Experience
- Age
I want to create a "virtual" attribute, that is based on the Experience and Age, called 'Salary'. For example: $salary = ($experience + $age) * 100
But I don't want to persist the Salary attribute. The reason is that I want to let the Salary attribute get's updated automatically whenever the age or experienced values change.
I have two questions regarding this:
Is the Entity file a good place to store the getSalary() function?
How can I make it so that whenever a Staff entity is called, the salary variable will be filled with the salary that is calculated based on age & experience?
Is the Entity file a good place to store the getSalary() function?
Yes, it is.
Not every field in your entity has to be mapped to a database field.
Also, entities can contain methods other than simple getters and setters. IMO as long as those methods operate on the entity fields, they belong to the entity.
How can I make it so that whenever a Staff entity is called, the salary variable will be filled with the salary that is calculated based on age & experience?
You could use one of the Doctrine's lifecycle events, for example the postLoad event, which is called after entity is loaded to the entity manager.
Note, that you don't have to be storing calculation results in a property. Your calculation is simple and it's probably better to define a getter.
I'm trying to create a many-to-many relationship in Entity Framework (code first), according to the following post: Database design for limited number of choices in MVC and Entity Framework?
However, I can't get it to work properly, and I'm sure I'm doing something very simple the wrong way. Here's the diagram I have no from my attempts:
The point of the junction table is that I need to have an extra property, Level, in the relationship, so I can't just go with a direct relationship between Consultant and Program. I added the ConsultantProgramLink entity manually in the designer, and then added associations to Program and Consultant respectively, selecting to add a FK for each, and then made them both primary keys. But when I do it like this it doesn't work as I expected:
If I had done a direct association between Consultant and Program, I would have been able to refer to, say, Consultant.Programs in my code. But that doesn't work now with the junction table. Is there any way to remedy this, or do I always have to go through the junction property (Consultant.ConsultantProgramLink.Programs)? In any case, even if I do try to go through the junction property it doesn't help. I can do Consultant.ConsultantProgramLink in my code, but another dot doesn't give me the navigation property Programs (which for some reason also became simply Program, why? Can I just rename them if I eventually get access to them at all?).
So what am I doing wrong? Why can't I access the properties through dot notation in my code?
Once you model a junction table as an entity you indeed lose direct many-to-many relation between Consultant and Program. That is how it works. You will either have direct many-to-many relation or additional properties in the junction table. Not both. If you want both you can try creating custom Programs property on Consultant and use linq query to get related programs:
public IEnumerable<Program> Programs
{
get
{
return this.ConsultantProgramLinks.Select(l => l.Program);
}
}
The example is also the explanation of your last problem. You can't have Program property on ConsultantProgramLink because it is a collection of related entities, not single entity (it should be called ConsultantProgramLinks). The property in ConsultantProgramLink entity is called simply Programbecause it represents single entity not collection.
Edit:
If you need each Program to be automatically associated with each Consultant you must enforce it when you are going to create new Program. Having junction table exposed as separate entity will probably allow you achieving it easily:
var program = new Program();
...
context.Programs.AddObject(program);
var ids = from c in context.Consultants
select c.Id;
foreach (var id in ids)
{
var link = new ConsultantProgramLink
{
ConsultantId = id,
Program = program
};
context.ConsultantProgramLinks.AddObject(link);
}
context.SaveChanges();
If you add new Consultant you will have to create links to all programs in the same way.
The disadvantage is that if you have for example 1000 consultants this construct will create 1001 database inserts where each insert will be executed in separate roundtrip to the database. To avoid it the only option is either use stored procedur or trigger on Program table.