Entity's id of parent is not saved in a OneToMany relationship in SonataAdmin

Question

I'm using SonataAdmin (and Symfony2) to manage my entities. I have a oneToMany relationship between one Step and many Tasks. Since one Step can contain many Tasks, when I create a Step, I want to be able to create many Tasks and I want those tasks to be linked to this Step. To do so, I created all the proper admin classes (one for Task and one for Step).

Here's what I do that causes my problem. When I try to create a Step, I can create the tasks and even reorder them, which is great and all done automatically by SonataAdminBundle. When I click on save, everything is saved in the database, except that in the database, the id of the step is not set in the row of the Task. Therefore, the tasks are not linked to the Step...

Here's my Step's admin class:

<?php
// src/Acme/DemoBundle/Admin/PostAdmin.php

namespace IMA\ProcessManagementBundle\Admin;

use Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\Admin;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\ListMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\DatagridMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Form\FormMapper;

class StepAdmin extends Admin
{
    // Fields to be shown on create/edit forms
    protected function configureFormFields(FormMapper $formMapper)
    {
        $formMapper
            ->add('name', 'text', array('label' => 'Nom de l\'étape'))

            ->add('tasks', 'sonata_type_collection', array(), array(
                'edit' => 'inline',
                'inline' => 'table',
                'sortable'  => 'positionNumber'
            ))
            ->add('positionNumber', 'integer', array('label' => 'Position'))
        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on filter forms
    protected function configureDatagridFilters(DatagridMapper $datagridMapper)
    {
        $datagridMapper
            ->add('name')

        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on lists
    protected function configureListFields(ListMapper $listMapper)
    {
        $listMapper
            ->addIdentifier('name')
            ->add('slug')
        ;
    }
}

Here's also my Task admin class:

<?php
// src/Acme/DemoBundle/Admin/PostAdmin.php

namespace IMA\ProcessManagementBundle\Admin;

use Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\Admin;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\ListMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\DatagridMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Form\FormMapper;

class TaskAdmin extends Admin
{
    // Fields to be shown on create/edit forms
    protected function configureFormFields(FormMapper $formMapper)
    {
        $formMapper
            ->add('name', 'text', array('label' => 'Tâche'))
            ->add('positionNumber', 'integer', array('label' => 'Position'))

        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on filter forms
    protected function configureDatagridFilters(DatagridMapper $datagridMapper)
    {
        $datagridMapper
            ->add('name')

        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on lists
    protected function configureListFields(ListMapper $listMapper)
    {
        $listMapper
            ->addIdentifier('name')
            ->add('slug')
        ;
    }
}

Also, here are the description of my entities

IMA\ProcessManagementBundle\Entity\Step:
    type: entity
    table: null
    fields:
        id:
            type: integer
            id: true
            generator:
                strategy: AUTO
        name:
            type: string
            length: 255
        positionNumber:
            type: integer


    oneToMany:
        tasks:
            targetEntity: Task
            mappedBy: step
            cascade: ["persist", "merge"]

    lifecycleCallbacks: {  }


IMA\ProcessManagementBundle\Entity\Task:
    type: entity
    table: null
    fields:
        id:
            type: integer
            id: true
            generator:
                strategy: AUTO
        name:
            type: string
            length: 255
        positionNumber:
            type: integer


    manyToOne:
        step:
            targetEntity: Step
            inversedBy: tasks


    lifecycleCallbacks: {  }

I'm wondering why the id of the Step is not set in the Task row...

Answer 1

You need to manually attach the step to the tasks, to do so you need to use the prePersist and preUpdate methods in the step admin class...

The reason for this is that the developers of the SonataAdminBundle say it's doctrine's concern to handle this and the Doctrine developers say it is the bundles responsibility... So for now we need to do it for ourselves.

This would be your new stepAdmin class:

<?php
namespace IMA\ProcessManagementBundle\Admin;

use Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\Admin;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\ListMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\DatagridMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Form\FormMapper;

class StepAdmin extends Admin
{
    // Fields to be shown on create/edit forms
    protected function configureFormFields(FormMapper $formMapper)
    {
        $formMapper
            ->add('name', 'text', array('label' => 'Nom de l\'étape'))

            ->add('tasks', 'sonata_type_collection', array(), array(
                'edit' => 'inline',
                'inline' => 'table',
                'sortable'  => 'positionNumber'
            ))
            ->add('positionNumber', 'integer', array('label' => 'Position'))
        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on filter forms
    protected function configureDatagridFilters(DatagridMapper $datagridMapper)
    {
        $datagridMapper
            ->add('name')

        ;
    }

    // Fields to be shown on lists
    protected function configureListFields(ListMapper $listMapper)
    {
        $listMapper
            ->addIdentifier('name')
            ->add('slug')
        ;
    }


    public function prePersist($object)
    {
        foreach ($object->getTasks() as $task) {
            $task->setStep($object);
        }
    }

    public function preUpdate($object)
    {
        foreach ($object->getTasks() as $task) {
            $task->setStep($object);
        }
    }


}

Answer 2

In your Step entity you have to add in the addTask method :

class Step
{
    //...

    public function addTask($tasks)
    {
        $tasks->setStep($this);
        $this->tasks[] = $tasks;

        return $this;
    }

    //...
}

As you haven't give your Step.php you should propably adapt this code.