On delete cascade with doctrine2

Question

There are two kinds of cascades in Doctrine:

1) ORM level - uses cascade={"remove"} in the association - this is a calculation that is done in the UnitOfWork and does not affect the database structure. When you remove an object, the UnitOfWork will iterate over all objects in the association and remove them.

2) Database level - uses onDelete="CASCADE" on the association's joinColumn - this will add On Delete Cascade to the foreign key column in the database:

@ORM\JoinColumn(name="father_id", referencedColumnName="id", onDelete="CASCADE")

I also want to point out that the way you have your cascade={"remove"} right now, if you delete a Child object, this cascade will remove the Parent object. Clearly not what you want.

Here is simple example. A contact has one to many associated phone numbers. When a contact is deleted, I want all its associated phone numbers to also be deleted, so I use ON DELETE CASCADE. The one-to-many/many-to-one relationship is implemented with by the foreign key in the phone_numbers.

CREATE TABLE contacts
 (contact_id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
 name VARCHAR(75) NOT NULL,
 PRIMARY KEY(contact_id)) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE phone_numbers
 (phone_id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
  phone_number CHAR(10) NOT NULL,
 contact_id BIGINT NOT NULL,
 PRIMARY KEY(phone_id),
 UNIQUE(phone_number)) ENGINE = InnoDB;

ALTER TABLE phone_numbers ADD FOREIGN KEY (contact_id) REFERENCES \
contacts(contact_id) ) ON DELETE CASCADE;

By adding "ON DELETE CASCADE" to the foreign key constraint, phone_numbers will automatically be deleted when their associated contact is deleted.

INSERT INTO table contacts(name) VALUES('Robert Smith');
INSERT INTO table phone_numbers(phone_number, contact_id) VALUES('8963333333', 1);
INSERT INTO table phone_numbers(phone_number, contact_id) VALUES('8964444444', 1);

Now when a row in the contacts table is deleted, all its associated phone_numbers rows will automatically be deleted.

DELETE TABLE contacts as c WHERE c.id=1; /* delete cascades to phone_numbers */

To achieve the same thing in Doctrine, to get the same DB-level "ON DELETE CASCADE" behavoir, you configure the @JoinColumn with the onDelete="CASCADE" option.

<?php
namespace Entities;

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="contacts")
 */
class Contact 
{

    /**
     *  @Id
     *  @Column(type="integer", name="contact_id") 
     *  @GeneratedValue
     */
    protected $id;  

    /** 
     * @Column(type="string", length="75", unique="true") 
     */ 
    protected $name; 

    /** 
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber", mappedBy="contact")
     */ 
    protected $phonenumbers; 

    public function __construct($name=null)
    {
        $this->phonenumbers = new ArrayCollection();

        if (!is_null($name)) {

            $this->name = $name;
        }
    }

    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->id;
    }

    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    public function addPhonenumber(Phonenumber $p)
    {
        if (!$this->phonenumbers->contains($p)) {

            $this->phonenumbers[] = $p;
            $p->setContact($this);
        }
    }

    public function removePhonenumber(Phonenumber $p)
    {
        $this->phonenumbers->remove($p);
    }
}

<?php
namespace Entities;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="phonenumbers")
 */
class Phonenumber 
{

    /**
    * @Id
    * @Column(type="integer", name="phone_id") 
    * @GeneratedValue
    */
    protected $id; 

    /**
     * @Column(type="string", length="10", unique="true") 
     */  
    protected $number;

    /** 
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Contact", inversedBy="phonenumbers")
     * @JoinColumn(name="contact_id", referencedColumnName="contact_id", onDelete="CASCADE")
     */ 
    protected $contact; 

    public function __construct($number=null)
    {
        if (!is_null($number)) {

            $this->number = $number;
        }
    }

    public function setPhonenumber($number)
    {
        $this->number = $number;
    }

    public function setContact(Contact $c)
    {
        $this->contact = $c;
    }
} 
?>

<?php

$em = \Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager::create($connectionOptions, $config);

$contact = new Contact("John Doe"); 

$phone1 = new Phonenumber("8173333333");
$phone2 = new Phonenumber("8174444444");
$em->persist($phone1);
$em->persist($phone2);
$contact->addPhonenumber($phone1); 
$contact->addPhonenumber($phone2); 

$em->persist($contact);
try {

    $em->flush();
} catch(Exception $e) {

    $m = $e->getMessage();
    echo $m . "<br />\n";
}

If you now do

# doctrine orm:schema-tool:create --dump-sql

you will see that the same SQL will be generated as in the first, raw-SQL example