symfony2 create doctrine collection from query - symfony

Question

Not sure if this is possible or not but im looking to create a doctrine collection from a query. The idea is to populate the collection with some pre-set values so i can update the database think of it like an import/generate users from an old system into a new one. Im struggling with the repository bit.
Entity
// Portal\UserBundle\Entity\User.php
namespace Portal\UserBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping AS ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class User
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="string", length=255, nullable=false)
*/
private $fistname;
/**
* Get id
*
* #return integer
*/
public function getId()
{
return $this->id;
}
// etc...
}
Repository
namespace Portal\UserBundle\Entity\Repository;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;
class UserRepository extends EntityRepository
{
public function getGenerateNewUsers()
{
// acts as an import from an old user table
$sql = " SELECT firstname, surname, other FROM old_user_table ";
$userCollection = .... not sure how I link query?
return $userCollection;
}
}
Calling it inside the controller
With the above I intend to be able to fetch the newly generated users loop over them and have access to my entity methods objects etc.
class SetupController extends Controller
{
public function indexAction(){
$repository = this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('UserBundle:User');
$newUsers = $repository->getGenerateUsers();
// I can now have access to the users with something like
foreach($newUsers as $user){
$user->setFirstName('testing');
$user->save();
}
}
}

Answer 1

It's usually the case with imports like this that your legacy table doesn't directly map to your new one (in terms of field names, constraints, etc), and may not even be in the same DBMS, so really the best option is a slightly manual approach. Execute your SQL query against your legacy database in your favourite old-fashioned way to get your users as simple arrays, then loop through them and create entities:
//Set up an empty collection
$collection = new ArrayCollection();
/*Assuming PDO where you have set up and executed a PDO statement $pdoStatement,
but mysql_fetch_assoc or whatever is appropriate for your DBMS would work equally
well. $oldUser should just be a plain associative array*/
while($oldUser = $pdoStatement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
//Initialise an empty User entity
$newUser = new User();
//Set the properties on the entity using the values from your array
$newUser->setFirstName($oldUser['firstname']);
//etc
//Add your user to the collection
$collection->add($newUser);
}
return $collection
I notice you're thinking of calling save() on your User objects in your controller, but it doesn't generally work that way in Doctrine as your entities will be plain objects which don't inherit from anything and don't have any special methods. The way to save the entity to your new database is to grab the entity manager and call its persist method.
In your controller:
$entityManager = $this->get('Doctrine')->getManager();
foreach($users as $user){
//Manipulate the user here if you need to
//Then persist it
$entityManager->persist($user);
}
As an aside - if you wanted to get a collection of entities by executing a query against your new database that's a slightly different problem to which there's a much more elegant solution. Doctrine Query Language allows you to query your database in a SQL-like way while using the language of your objects. With DQL, the results of your queries will by default be hydrated into Doctrine entites.

Answer 2

Hogan mentions DQL. Here is what that would look like, but you'd have to make sure your old database was wired up. The result is a collection of entities, off which you could use method calls to store part or all of the data as you see fit.
namespace Portal\UserBundle\Entity\Repository;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;
class UserRepository extends EntityRepository
{
public function getGenerateNewUsers()
{
$qb = $this->getEntityManager()
->getRepository('Bundle:Old_User')->createQueryBuilder('o');
$query = $qb->getQuery();
$results = $query->getResult();
return $results;
}
}