Doctrine 2: Call to a member function format() on a non-object ... in DateTimeType.php

Question

I have a DateTime field:

/**
 * Date time posted
 * @Column(type="datetime")
 */
private $dtPosted;

which is set to a default value by using a LifeCycleCallback

/**
 * @PrePersist
 */
function onPrePersist() {
    // set default date
    $this->dtPosted = date('Y-m-d H:m:s');

I am getting the following error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function format() on a non-object in D:\ResourceLibrary\Frameworks\Doctrine\lib\Doctrine\DBAL\Types\DateTimeType.php on line 46

Answer 1

The date() function returns a string. The datetime type works with DateTime objects. So either change the mapping type to string or use DateTime objects.

Answer 2

you could always use:

$this->updated = new \DateTime("now");

http://www.doctrine-project.org/docs/orm/2.0/en/cookbook/working-with-datetime.html

Answer 3

Try and use your setCreated with annotations for @ORM\PrePersist and setUpdated with annotations for @ORM\PrePersist and @ORM\PreUpdate methods as opposed to prePersist and preUpdate methods...

/**
 * @ORM\PrePersist
 */
public function setCreated()
{
    $this->created = new \DateTime();
}

/**
 * @ORM\PrePersist
 * @ORM\PreUpdate
 */
public function setUpdated()
{
    $this->updated = new \DateTime();
}

Answer 4

I came across a similar problem, but with a time field, and this question and @romanb 's answer helped.

I was getting the following error, much like the one in the question.

Call to a member function format() on a non-object in 
... /vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Types/TimeType.php on line 50

The solution was similar, for fields of the time datatype, Doctrine will accept an instance of PHP's DateInterval

$quizFixture1->setCompletionTime(\DateInterval::createFromDateString('743 seconds'));