Symfony 3, query without Entity but with doctrine

Question

I've created an API system. Everything is perfect, it works with Elastic as Db. Unfortunately a single function need to add/edit/retrieve a row in an old mysql db.

I don't want to connect to db anytime but just when I need it. I'd like to use createQueryBuilder but without entity. Is it possible?

Answer 1

You could use the DBAL to make a plain old query, which will return an array:

<?php

namespace AppBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;

class MyRepository extends EntityRepository
{
    public function findSmth()
    {
        $conn = $this->getEntityManager()->getConnection();
        $sql = 'SELECT * FROM my_table';
        $stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
        $stmt->execute();

        var_dump($stmt->fetchAll());die;
    }
}

QueryBuilder just converts down to DQL, and DQL provides querying capabilities over your object model. So, I think you cannot use QB without entity.