Symfony form - Choicetype - Error "Array to string conversion"

Question

I'm running Symfony 3.4 with FosUserBundle. I customized the registration form in order to get the Roles included:

$form->add('roles', ChoiceType::class, array(
    'choices' => array(
        'user' => 'ROLE_USER',
        'admin' => 'ROLE_ADMIN'
    ),
    'label' => 'Role :',
    'expanded' => true,
    'multiple' => true
));

Then roles are now selectable in the registration form through 2 new checkbox... but I'd like to display it with a <select> tag. When I set the expanded option to false I get a select, but if I set the multiple option to FALSE I get an error:

Array to string conversion

Any idea to fix my issue?

Below is the stack trace:

Symfony\Component\Debug\Exception\ContextErrorException:
Notice: Array to string conversion

  at vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\ChoiceList\ArrayChoiceList.php:73
  at Symfony\Component\Form\ChoiceList\ArrayChoiceList->Symfony\Component\Form\ChoiceList\{closure}(array('ROLE_USER'))
  at call_user_func(object(Closure), array('ROLE_USER'))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\ChoiceList\ArrayChoiceList.php:158)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\ChoiceList\ArrayChoiceList->getValuesForChoices(array(array('ROLE_USER')))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\DataTransformer\ChoiceToValueTransformer.php:32)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\DataTransformer\ChoiceToValueTransformer->transform(array('ROLE_USER'))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Form.php:1104)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\Form->normToView(array('ROLE_USER'))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Form.php:350)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\Form->setData(array('ROLE_USER'))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\DataMapper\PropertyPathMapper.php:49)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\DataMapper\PropertyPathMapper->mapDataToForms(object(User), object(RecursiveIteratorIterator))
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Form.php:383)
  at Symfony\Component\Form\Form->setData(object(User))
     (vendor\friendsofsymfony\user-bundle\Controller\RegistrationController.php:70)
  at FOS\UserBundle\Controller\RegistrationController->registerAction(object(Request))
  at call_user_func_array(array(object(RegistrationController), 'registerAction'), array(object(Request)))
     (var\cache\dev\classes.php:4659)
  at Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(object(Request), 1)
     (var\cache\dev\classes.php:4614)
  at Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(object(Request), 1, true)
     (vendor\symfony\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Kernel.php:200)
  at Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Kernel->handle(object(Request))
     (web\app_dev.php:29)

Answer 1

to solve your problem you need a data transformer, because the roles field is actually an array :

add the data transformer to your FormType class along with the roles field instead of adding it in the controller:

$builder->add('roles', ChoiceType::class, array(
    'choices' => array(
        'user' => 'ROLE_USER',
        'admin' => 'ROLE_ADMIN'
    ),
    'label' => 'Role :'
));

//roles field data transformer
$builder->get('roles')
    ->addModelTransformer(new CallbackTransformer(
        function ($rolesArray) {
             // transform the array to a string
             return count($rolesArray)? $rolesArray[0]: null;
        },
        function ($rolesString) {
             // transform the string back to an array
             return [$rolesString];
        }
));