Map array to entity in Symfony2/Doctrine2

Question

I'm using the DoctrineFixtures bundle to create example entities during development. In my ORM fixtures load() method, I define the data as associative arrays and create the entity object in a loop.

<?php
// ...
public function load($manager) {
    $roleDefs = array(
        'role-1' => array(
             'role' => 'administrator'
        ),
        'role-2' => array(
             'role' => 'user'
        ),
    );

    foreach($roleDefs as $key => $roleDef) {
        $role = new Role();
        $role->setRole($roleDef['role']);
        $manager->persist($role);

        $this->addReference($key, $role);
    }

    $manager->flush();
}

I always use the same array schema. Every array element uses the property name (in underscore notation) of the entity as index. If the entity structure becomes more complex, there are a lot of $entity->setMyProperty($def['my_property']); lines.

I think the problem of mapping propertynames to setter methods is a very common problem in Symfony and Doctrine as this type of mapping is found in many situations (e.g. mapping forms to entities).

Now I'm wondering if there is a built-in method that can be used for mapping. It would be nice to have a solution like

foreach($defs as $key => $def) {
   $entity = $magicMapper->getEntity('MyBundle:MyEntity', $def);
   // ...
}

Has someone an idea how this can be achieved?

Thanks a lot, Hacksteak

Answer 1

I sometimes use loops when creating fixtures. I'm not sure if this solution fits your requirements, but I find that the most flexible way to build fixtures and quickly add new properties over time if you need is to do the following... Assuming the creation of a bunch of blog posts:

// an array of blog post fixture values
$posts = array(
    array(
        'title' => 'Foo',
        'text'  => 'lorem'
        'date'  => new \DateTime('2011-12-01'),
    ),
    array(
        'title' => 'Bar',
        'text'  => 'lorem'
        'date'  => new \DateTime('2011-12-02'),
    ),
    // more data...
);

// loop over the posts
foreach ($posts as $post) {
    // new entity
    $post = new Post();

    // now loop over the properties of each post array...
    foreach ($post as $property => $value) {
        // create a setter
        $method = sprintf('set%s', ucwords($property)); // or you can cheat and omit ucwords() because PHP method calls are case insensitive
        // use the method as a variable variable to set your value
        $post->$method($value);
    }

    // persist the entity
    $em->persist($post);
}

This way you can add more properties by just adding the new values to your array.