How can I use regular expressions with Doctrine's Mongodb ODM?

Question

I'm trying to use regular expressions to query Mongodb using Doctrine's Mongodb ODM on Symfony 2.

I know the PHP mongo driver can do it. However, I don't know how to do this with Doctrine.

Do I use the same class? How do I reference MongoRegex from within Symfony?

Answer 1

This came up a while ago on the doctrine-user mailing list. You can use the \MongoRegex class directly in your ODM queries:

$documentRepository->findBy(array(
    'foo' => new \MongoRegex('/^bar/'),
));

Or if using a query builder:

$queryBuilder->field('foo')->equals(new \MongoRegex('/^bar/'));

Keep in mind that front-anchored, case-sensitive regex patterns will be able to use indexes most efficiently. This is discussed in more detail in the Mongo docs.