symfony doctrine using setters and getters dynamically

Question

I'm using symfony and doctrine.

The server gets a HTTP PATCH request for the URL /company/{id} containing the property of a model and its value like {"name": "My new name"} The new value needs to be persisted into the DB.

$request = Request::createFromGlobals();
$requestContentJSON = $request->getContent();
$requestContentObj = json_decode($requestContentJSON);

$repository = $this->getDoctrine()->getRepository('MyBundle:Company');
$company = $repository->find($id);

Now I could just enter $company->setName($requestContentObj[0]); but the property being received will vary. Right now I'm using the following code to be able to handle every property:

foreach($requestContentObj as $key => $value){
    switch($key){
        case 'name':
            $company->setName($value);
            break;
        case 'department':
            $company->setDepartment($value);
            break;
        case 'origin':
            $company->setOrigin($value);
            break;
        case 'headquarters':
            $company->setHeadquarters($value);
            break;
        case 'email':
            $company->setEmail($value);
            break;
        case 'twitterid':
            $company->setTwitterId($value);
            break;
        case 'description':
            $company->setDescription($value);
            break;
    }
}

But this doesn't look very smart especially because I know that I will have other entities like news, products, users, etc that will have their properties updated in the same manner. I'd like to do something like this:

$company->set("property", "value");

First thought that crossed my mind was to put this switch statement inside the company class inside this set function and also inside all the other entity classes I have. But is there a better way? Maybe symfony/doctrine has the solution already built-in, but I didn't find anything that would suit me.

I still want to use setters and getters as a long-term investment.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Assuming you'll have the property names similar to method names.

You can do something like this. To set multiple properties.

Class customer {

    protected $_email;

    public function __construct(array $config = array()){
         $this->setOptions($config);
     }

    public function getEmail(){
        return $this->_email;
    }

    public function setEmail($email){
        $this->_email = $email;
    }

    public function setOptions(array $options)
    {
        $_classMethods = get_class_methods($this);
        foreach ($options as $key => $value) {
            $method = 'set' . ucfirst($key);
            if (in_array($method, $_classMethods)) {
                $this->$method($value);
            } else {
                throw new Exception('Invalid method name');
            }
        }
        return $this;
    }

    public function setOption($key, $value){
        return $this->setOptions(array($key, $value));
    }

}

Now you can simply do this:

$array = array('email' => '[email protected]');
$customer = new Customer($array);
echo $customer->getEmail();

Answer 2

My inital thought would be to add a merge method to your class, like so:

<?php

// example Company entity
class Company
{
    private $name;

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

    function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    function merge(\stdClass $obj)
    {
        // get the object vars of the passed object
        // iterate, and replace matching properties
        foreach (get_object_vars($obj) as $prop => $val) {
            if (property_exists($this, $prop)) {
                $this->$prop = $val;
            }
        }
    }
}

$company = new Company();

// mocking your request object
$requestContentObj = new stdClass();
$requestContentObj->name = 'acme';

$company->merge($requestContentObj);

var_dump($company);

Yields:

class Company#1 (1) {
    private $name =>
    string(4) "acme"
}

This silently dumps any passed values that do not match any properties in your Company class, which may or may not be what you want. Hope this helps :)