Symfony ManyToOne relationship getter returns empty object - symfony

Question

I'll simplifly my code, I have te next:
Doctor entity:
use ...\...\Entity\Paciente;
class Doctor extends Usuario {
public function __construct() {
...
$this->pacientes = new ArrayCollection();
...
}
/**
* Número de colegiado - numColegiado
*
* #var string
*
* #ORM\Column(name="numColegiado", type="string", length=255, unique=true)
*/
protected $numColegiado;
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Paciente", mappedBy="doctor")
* #var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection
*/
private $pacientes;
...
}
Paciente entity:
use \...\...\Entity\Doctor;
...
class Paciente extends Usuario {
}
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
protected $id;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Doctor", inversedBy="pacientes")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="doctorNum", referencedColumnName="numColegiado", nullable=TRUE)
*
* #var type
*/
protected $doctor;
...
/**
* Set doctor
*
* #param Doctor $doctor
* #return Paciente
*/
public function setDoctor(Doctor $doctor = null)
{
$this->doctor = $doctor;
return $this;
}
/**
* Get doctor
*
* #return Doctor
*/
public function getDoctor()
{
return $this->doctor;
}
}
Ok, the matter is, when I execute that code (of course there is a relationship created and this object exists in the database):
\Doctrine\Common\Util\Debug::dump($paciente->getDoctor());
It prints that follows:
object(stdClass)#804 (28) { ["__CLASS__"]=> string(34) "Knoid\CorcheckBundle\Entity\Doctor" ["__IS_PROXY__"]=> bool(true) ["__PROXY_INITIALIZED__"]=> bool(false) ["id"]=> NULL ["numColegiado"]=> NULL ["pacientes"]=> NULL ["nombre"]=> NULL ["apellidos"]=> NULL ["dni"]=> NULL ["tipo"]=> NULL ["username"]=> NULL ["usernameCanonical"]=> NULL ["email"]=> NULL ["emailCanonical"]=> NULL ["enabled"]=> NULL ["salt"]=> NULL ["password"]=> NULL ["plainPassword"]=> NULL ["lastLogin"]=> NULL ["confirmationToken"]=> NULL ["passwordRequestedAt"]=> NULL ["groups"]=> NULL ["locked"]=> NULL ["expired"]=> NULL ["expiresAt"]=> NULL ["roles"]=> NULL ["credentialsExpired"]=> NULL ["credentialsExpireAt"]=> NULL }
As you can see, all the atributes of the "doctor" object are null, the object exists but it's empty, in my DB this object exists and it isn't empty.
Any idea of what's happening ?

Answer 1

This is because the proxy object is not initialised yet. One way to initialise it, is by querying the object e.g. $doctor->getId(). If you dump the object after that, you'll see that all the attributes are 'visible'

Answer 2

The answer of Thomas K worked for me in my own Bundle. If I translate what I did :
$myPaciente = $em->getRepository('MyBundle:Paciente')->findOneBy(array('numColegiado' => $value));
I add $myPaciente->getDoctor()->getName();
Then the initialisation was done and I could dump $myPaciente with all the information about the doctor related to it.