Symfony2 and Doctrine2 : populate form with two Entity (a complicated scenario)

Question

I have 5 entities:

• User,
• Person,
• UserAffiliation,
• PersonAffiliation and
• Affiliation

Here is the schema:

Some details:

• A WebUser is a Person who is registered to the website. For each Webuser, there is a person ID.

• A person can be a web user, an author etc.

• Each WebUser has 0 or more affiliations. Those affiliations were created by this WebUser and linked in the able UserAffiliations.

• The WebUser can also link the affiliations he createed to a person (if the person is an author) and the Entity PersonAffiliation will be populated.

I am trying now to give the possibility to the webuser to assign an affiliation to an author (person). For that, the I have:

• In the Entity Person

  @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="PersonAffiliation", mappedBy="person", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
  
  protected $affiliations;
  

• In the PersonAffiliation

  @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Person", inversedBy="affiliations")
  @ORM\JoinColumn(name="person_id", referencedColumnName="id")
  
  protected $person;
  
  @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Affiliation", inversedBy="person_affiliations")
  @ORM\JoinColumn(name="affiliation_id", referencedColumnName="id")
  
  protected $affiliation;
  

• In the Entity User:

  @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="UserAffiliation", mappedBy="user")
  
  protected $affiliations;
  
  
  @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Person")
  @ORM\JoinColumn(name="person_id", referencedColumnName="id")
  
  protected $person;
  

• In the Entity UserAffiliation

  @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="affiliations")
  @ORM\JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")
  
  protected $user;
  
  
  @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Affiliation", inversedBy="user_affiliations")
  @ORM\JoinColumn(name="affiliation_id", referencedColumnName="id")
  
   protected $affiliation;
  

In the form, I am doing the next:

$builder->add('affiliations', 'entity', array(
            'class' => 'SciForumVersion2Bundle:PersonAffiliation',
            'query_builder' => function($em) use ($person){
            return $em->createQueryBuilder('pa')->where('pa.person_id = :id')->setParameter('id', $person->getId());
        },
            'property'    => 'affiliation',
            'multiple' => true,
            'expanded' => true,
        ));

But all this is not working properly as I would like.

Explanation: When I try to add a new affiliation, it is only added for the WebUser and I can't link it through the form to the author (Person).

Do you have an idea on how to resolve this, or maybe a good tutorial?

Answer 1

This should be handled in the Entity1Controller.php:

public function createAction(Request $request)
{
  $securityContext = $this->get('security.context');
  $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
  $form = $this->createForm(new Entity1Type()
     ,null,array('attr' => array('securitycontext' => $securityContext)));
  $form->bind($request);

  if ($form->isValid()){
    $data = $form->getData();
    $entity1id = $data->getId();
    $entity2id = $data->getEntity2Id();
    $entity1medicaid=$data->getMedicaidID();
    $entity1=$em->getRepostiory('projectBundle:Entity1')->findOneById($entity1id);
    $entity2=$em->getRepository('projectprojectBundle:Entity2')->findOneById($entity2id);
    if (null === $entity1){
      $entity1=new entity1();
      $entity1->setEntity2id($entity2id);
      $entity1->setID($entity1id);
    }
    if (null === $entity2){
      $entity2=new entity2();
      $entity2->setID($entity2id);
    }
    $em->persist($entity1);
    $em->persist($entity2);
    $em->flush();
    return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('entity1', array()));
  }

  return $this->render('Bundle:entity1:new.html.twig', array(
      'form'   => $form->createView()
     ,'attr' => array('securitycontext' => $securityContext
     )
  )
  );
}

You may also have to set cascade persist in your association mappings. Entity1.yml:

project\projectBundle\Entity\Entity1:
    type: entity
    table: entity1
    repositoryClass: project\projectBundle\Entity\Entity1Repository
    fields:
        id:
            type: bigint
            id: true
            generator:
                strategy: AUTO
        property:
            type: string
            length: 255
            unique: true
    manyToMany:
        entity2:
            targetEntity: entity2
            mappedBy: entity1
            cascade: ["persist"]

In theory, symfony will make entity2 under the hood, making the second if null clause unnecessary, but that always bothers me, so I prefer to do it explicitly.

Answer 2

Well if this form is binding the collection to a WebUser Entity is because you are passing in to the Form creation in the Controller an object of such class, it means:

$webUser = new WebUser();

$this->createForm(new SubmissionAffiliationFormType(), $webUser);

or you are delegating the decision of which class to use to Symfony Forms by not setting the DefaultOptions and telling explicitly the data_class it must be bind to:

class SubmissionAffiliationFormType extends AbstractType
{

    //...

    public function getDefaultOptions(array $options)
    {
        return array(
            'data_class' => 'Acme\DemoBundle\Entity\Person',
        );
    }
}