Multiple, dependent one-to-many relations in Symfony forms - symfony

Question

I'm trying to get a multi-relation (multiple, dependent one-to-many relations) form working, but no success. I'm using Symfony 2.3 with FOSUserbundle.
Entity User
use FOS\UserBundle\Entity\User as BaseUser;
[...]
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #Gedmo\Loggable
* #ORM\Table(name="ta_user", indexes={#ORM\Index(name="IDX_LOGIN_TOKEN", columns={"login_token"})})
*/
class User extends BaseUser
{
[...]
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="UserLifestyle", mappedBy="user", fetch="LAZY", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
*/
protected $lifestyle;
UserManager
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
use FOS\UserBundle\Entity\UserManager as BaseUserManager;
use Acme\UserBundle\Entity\LifestyleQuestion;
use Acme\UserBundle\Entity\UserLifestyle;
[...]
class UserManager extends BaseUserManager {
public function createUser() {
$user = parent::createUser();
$lifestyle = new UserLifestyle();
$lifestyle->setQuestion($this->objectManager->getReference('Acme\UserBundle\Entity\LifestyleQuestion', 1));
$user->addLifeStyle($lifestyle);
$lifestyle = new UserLifestyle();
$lifestyle->setQuestion($this->objectManager->getReference('Acme\UserBundle\Entity\LifestyleQuestion', 2));
$user->addLifeStyle($lifestyle);
$lifestyle = new UserLifestyle();
$lifestyle->setQuestion($this->objectManager->getReference('Acme\UserBundle\Entity\LifestyleQuestion', 3));
$user->addLifeStyle($lifestyle);
return $user;
}
Entity UserLifestyle
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #Gedmo\Loggable
* #ORM\Table(name="ta_user_lifestyle")
*/
class UserLifestyle
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="smallint")
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
protected $id;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="lifestyle")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="user_id")
*/
protected $user;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="LifestyleQuestion", inversedBy="answeredByUser")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="question_id")
*/
protected $question;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="LifestyleAnswer", inversedBy="userAnswers")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="answer_id")
* #Gedmo\Versioned
*/
protected $answer;
Then, there's a form type
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolverInterface;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;
class RegistrationType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('email', NULL, array('label' => 'E-Mail'))
[...]
->add('lifestyle', 'collection', array(
'type' => new RegistrationLifestyleType(),
'allow_add' => false,
'allow_delete' => false,
'label' => false,
))
and now there should be a related RegistrationLifestyleType. But I've no idea how it should look like. I expect, that there are three choice fields in my registration form, showing a question (as label) and bunch of answers (as choice field) related to these questions. The UserManager assigns three questions to a newly created user, so one can get a question with:
$lifestyles = $user->getLifestyles();
foreach ($lifestyles as $lifestyle) {
$question = $lifestyle->getQuestion(); // echo $question->getQuestion();
$answers = $lifestyle->getQuestion()->getAnswers(); // loop through $answers and echo $answer->getAnswer();
}
But how I can modify the form type, to get this working. Important: my intention is to use built-in functionality as most as possible and trying to avoid inflating form types and others by injecting service containers and entity managers.

Answer 1

Found a solution, perhaps someone can use it. The problem seems, that LifestyleQuestion and LifestyleAnswer are 1:n relations at the same object (UserLifestyle), so Symfony does not know how to deal with it, even if I set the LifestyleQuestion to a specific question in UserManager already. Regarding https://stackoverflow.com/a/9729888/672452 one has to use form listeners, so the parent object is available in sub form. So here is my "simple" RegistrationLifestyleType (without using any injected container or manager):
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolverInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvents;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvent;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\SecurityContext;
class RegistrationLifestyleType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options) {
$builder->addEventListener(FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA, function (FormEvent $event) use ($builder) {
$form = $event->getForm();
$lifestyle = $event->getData();
if (!($lifestyle instanceof \Acme\UserBundle\Entity\UserLifestyle) || !$lifestyle->getQuestion()) return;
$label = $lifestyle->getQuestion()->getQuestion();
$questionId = $lifestyle->getQuestion()->getId();
$form->add('answer', 'entity', array(
'class' => 'AcmeUserBundle:LifestyleAnswer',
'empty_value' => '',
'property' => 'answer',
'query_builder' => function(EntityRepository $er) use ($questionId) {
return $er
->createQueryBuilder('t1')
->andWhere('t1.question = :question')
->setParameter('question', $questionId)
->orderBy('t1.answer', 'ASC')
;
},
'label' => $label,
));
});
}
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'Acme\UserBundle\Entity\UserLifestyle',
'error_bubbling' => false,
));
}
}