Welcome to Doctrine 2 ORM’s documentation!¶

The Doctrine documentation is comprised of tutorials, a reference section and cookbook articles that explain different parts of the Object Relational mapper.

Doctrine DBAL and Doctrine Common both have their own documentation.

Getting Help¶

If this documentation is not helping to answer questions you have about Doctrine ORM don’t panic. You can get help from different sources:

There is a FAQ with answers to frequent questions.
The Doctrine Mailing List
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in #doctrine on Freenode
Report a bug on JIRA.
On Twitter with #doctrine2
On StackOverflow

If you need more structure over the different topics you can browse the table of contents.

Getting Started¶

Tutorial: Getting Started with Doctrine
Setup: Installation & Configuration

Mapping Objects onto a Database¶

Mapping: Objects | Associations | Inheritance
Drivers: Docblock Annotations | XML | YAML | PHP

Working with Objects¶

Basic Reference: Entities | Associations | Events
Query Reference: DQL | QueryBuilder | Native SQL
Internals: Internals explained | Associations

Advanced Topics¶

Architecture

Advanced Configuration

Limitations and knowns issues

Commandline Tools

Transactions and Concurrency

Filters

NamingStrategy

Improving Performance

Caching

Partial Objects

Change Tracking Policies

Best Practices

Metadata Drivers

Tutorials¶

Indexed associations

Extra Lazy Associations

Composite Primary Keys

Ordered associations

Pagination

Override Field/Association Mappings In Subclasses

Cookbook¶

Patterns: Aggregate Fields | Decorator Pattern | Strategy Pattern
DQL Extension Points: DQL Custom Walkers | DQL User-Defined-Functions
Implementation: Array Access | Notify ChangeTracking Example | Using Wakeup Or Clone | Working with DateTime | Validation | Entities in the Session | Keeping your Modules independent
Integration into Frameworks/Libraries CodeIgniter
Hidden Gems Prefixing Table Name
Custom Datatypes MySQL Enums Advanced Field Value Conversion

Welcome to Doctrine 2 ORM’s documentation!¶

Tutorials¶

Getting Started with Doctrine¶

This guide covers getting started with the Doctrine ORM. After working through the guide you should know:

How to install and configure Doctrine by connecting it to a database
Mapping PHP objects to database tables
Generating a database schema from PHP objects
Using the EntityManager to insert, update, delete and find objects in the database.

Guide Assumptions¶

This guide is designed for beginners that haven’t worked with Doctrine ORM before. There are some prerequesites for the tutorial that have to be installed:

PHP 5.3.3 or above
Composer Package Manager (Install Composer)

The code of this tutorial is available on Github.

Note

This tutorial assumes you work with Doctrine 2.4 and above. Some of the code will not work with lower versions.

What is Doctrine?¶

Doctrine 2 is an object-relational mapper (ORM) for PHP 5.3.3+ that provides transparent persistence for PHP objects. It uses the Data Mapper pattern at the heart, aiming for a complete separation of your domain/business logic from the persistence in a relational database management system.

The benefit of Doctrine for the programmer is the ability to focus on the object-oriented business logic and worry about persistence only as a secondary problem. This doesn’t mean persistence is downplayed by Doctrine 2, however it is our belief that there are considerable benefits for object-oriented programming if persistence and entities are kept separated.

What are Entities?¶

Entities are PHP Objects that can be identified over many requests by a unique identifier or primary key. These classes don’t need to extend any abstract base class or interface. An entity class must not be final or contain final methods. Additionally it must not implement clone nor wakeup or do so safely.

An entity contains persistable properties. A persistable property is an instance variable of the entity that is saved into and retrieved from the database by Doctrine’s data mapping capabilities.

An Example Model: Bug Tracker¶

For this Getting Started Guide for Doctrine we will implement the Bug Tracker domain model from the Zend_Db_Table documentation. Reading their documentation we can extract the requirements:

A Bugs has a description, creation date, status, reporter and engineer
A bug can occur on different products (platforms)
Products have a name.
Bug Reporter and Engineers are both Users of the System.
A user can create new bugs.
The assigned engineer can close a bug.
A user can see all his reported or assigned bugs.
Bugs can be paginated through a list-view.

Setup Project¶

Create a new empty folder for this tutorial project, for example doctrine2-tutorial and create a new file composer.json with the following contents:

{
    "require": {
        "doctrine/orm": "2.*",
        "symfony/yaml": "2.*"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-0": {"": "src/"}
    }
}

Install Doctrine using the Composer Dependency Management tool, by calling:

$ composer install

This will install the packages Doctrine Common, Doctrine DBAL, Doctrine ORM, Symfony YAML and Symfony Console. Both Symfony dependencies are optional but will be used in this tutorial.

You can prepare the directory structure:

project
|-- composer.json
|-- config
|   |-- xml
|   `-- yaml
`-- src

Obtaining the EntityManager¶

Doctrine’s public interface is the EntityManager, it provides the access point to the complete lifecycle management of your entities and transforms entities from and back to persistence. You have to configure and create it to use your entities with Doctrine 2. I will show the configuration steps and then discuss them step by step:

<?php
// bootstrap.php
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Setup;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;

require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

// Create a simple "default" Doctrine ORM configuration for Annotations
$isDevMode = true;
$config = Setup::createAnnotationMetadataConfiguration(array(__DIR__."/src"), $isDevMode);
// or if you prefer yaml or XML
//$config = Setup::createXMLMetadataConfiguration(array(__DIR__."/config/xml"), $isDevMode);
//$config = Setup::createYAMLMetadataConfiguration(array(__DIR__."/config/yaml"), $isDevMode);

// database configuration parameters
$conn = array(
    'driver' => 'pdo_sqlite',
    'path' => __DIR__ . '/db.sqlite',
);

// obtaining the entity manager
$entityManager = EntityManager::create($conn, $config);

The first require statement sets up the autoloading capabilities of Doctrine using the Composer autoload.

The second block consists of the instantiation of the ORM Configuration object using the Setup helper. It assumes a bunch of defaults that you don’t have to bother about for now. You can read up on the configuration details in the reference chapter on configuration.

The third block shows the configuration options required to connect to a database, in my case a file-based sqlite database. All the configuration options for all the shipped drivers are given in the DBAL Configuration section of the manual.

The last block shows how the EntityManager is obtained from a factory method.

Generating the Database Schema¶

Now that we have defined the Metadata Mappings and bootstrapped the EntityManager we want to generate the relational database schema from it. Doctrine has a Command-Line-Interface that allows you to access the SchemaTool, a component that generates the required tables to work with the metadata.

For the command-line tool to work a cli-config.php file has to be present in the project root directory, where you will execute the doctrine command. Its a fairly simple file:

<?php
// cli-config.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

return \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\ConsoleRunner::createHelperSet($entityManager);

You can then change into your project directory and call the Doctrine command-line tool:

$ cd project/
$ php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:create

During the development you probably need to re-create the database several times when changing the Entity metadata. You can then either re-create the database:

$ php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:drop --force
$ php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:create

Or use the update functionality:

$ php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:update --force

The updating of databases uses a Diff Algorithm for a given Database Schema, a cornerstone of the Doctrine\DBAL package, which can even be used without the Doctrine ORM package. However its not available in SQLite since it does not support ALTER TABLE.

Starting with the Product¶

We start with the Product entity requirements, because it is the most simple one to get started. Create a src/Product.php file and put the Product entity definition in there:

<?php
// src/Product.php
class Product
{
    /**
     * @var int
     */
    protected $id;
    /**
     * @var string
     */
    protected $name;

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

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

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

Note how the properties have getter and setter methods defined except $id. To access data from entities Doctrine 2 uses the Reflection API, so it is possible for Doctrine to access the value of $id. You don’t have to take Doctrine into account when designing access to the state of your objects.

The next step for persistence with Doctrine is to describe the structure of the Product entity to Doctrine using a metadata language. The metadata language describes how entities, their properties and references should be persisted and what constraints should be applied to them.

Metadata for entities are configured using a XML, YAML or Docblock Annotations. This Getting Started Guide will show the mappings for all Mapping Drivers. References in the text will be made to the XML mapping.

PHP

<?php
// src/Product.php
/**
 * @Entity @Table(name="products")
 **/
class Product
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue **/
    protected $id;
    /** @Column(type="string") **/
    protected $name;

    // .. (other code)
}

XML

<!-- config/xml/Product.dcm.xml -->
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

      <entity name="Product" table="products">
          <id name="id" type="integer">
              <generator strategy="AUTO" />
          </id>

          <field name="name" type="string" />
      </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

# config/yaml/Product.dcm.yml
Product:
  type: entity
  table: products
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      type: string

The top-level entity definition tag specifies information about the class and table-name. The primitive type Product::$name is defined as field attributes. The Id property is defined with the id tag. The id has a generator tag nested inside which defines that the primary key generation mechanism automatically uses the database platforms native id generation strategy, for example AUTO INCREMENT in the case of MySql or Sequences in the case of PostgreSql and Oracle.

You have to update the database now, because we have a first Entity now:

$ php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:update --force --dump-sql

Specifying both flags --force and -dump-sql prints and executes the DDL statements.

Now create a new script that will insert products into the database:

<?php
// create_product.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$newProductName = $argv[1];

$product = new Product();
$product->setName($newProductName);

$entityManager->persist($product);
$entityManager->flush();

echo "Created Product with ID " . $product->getId() . "\n";

Call this script from the command line to see how new products are created:

$ php create_product.php ORM
$ php create_product.php DBAL

What is happening here? Using the Product is pretty standard OOP. The interesting bits are the use of the EntityManager service. To notify the EntityManager that a new entity should be inserted into the database you have to call persist(). To intiate a transaction to actually perform the insertion, You have to explicitly call flush() on the EntityManager.

This distinction between persist and flush is allows to aggregate all writes (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) into one single transaction, which is executed when flush is called. Using this approach the write-performance is significantly better than in a scenario where updates are done for each entity in isolation.

Doctrine follows the UnitOfWork pattern which additionally detects all entities that were fetched and have changed during the request. You don’t have to keep track of entities yourself, when Doctrine already knowns about them.

As a next step we want to fetch a list of all the products. Let’s create a new script for this:

<?php
// list_products.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$productRepository = $entityManager->getRepository('Product');
$products = $productRepository->findAll();

foreach ($products as $product) {
    echo sprintf("-%s\n", $product->getName());
}

The EntityManager#getRepository() method can create a finder object (called repository) for every entity. It is provided by Doctrine and contains some finder methods such as findAll().

Let’s continue with displaying the name of a product based on its ID:

<?php
// show_product.php <id>
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$id = $argv[1];
$product = $entityManager->find('Product', $id);

if ($product === null) {
    echo "No product found.\n";
    exit(1);
}

echo sprintf("-%s\n", $product->getName());

Updating a product name demonstrates the functionality UnitOfWork of pattern discussed before. We only need to find a product entity and all changes to its properties are written to the database:

<?php
// update_product.php <id> <new-name>
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$id = $argv[1];
$newName = $argv[2];

$product = $entityManager->find('Product', $id);

if ($product === null) {
    echo "Product $id does not exist.\n";
    exit(1);
}

$product->setName($newName);

$entityManager->flush();

After calling this script on one of the existing products, you can verify the product name changed by calling the show_product.php script.

Adding Bug and User Entities¶

We continue with the bug tracker domain, by creating the missing classes Bug and User and putting them into src/Bug.php and src/User.php respectively.

<?php
// src/Bug.php
/**
 * @Entity(repositoryClass="BugRepository") @Table(name="bugs")
 */
class Bug
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue
     * @var int
     */
    protected $id;
    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description;
    /**
     * @Column(type="datetime")
     * @var DateTime
     */
    protected $created;
    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     * @var string
     */
    protected $status;

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

    public function getDescription()
    {
        return $this->description;
    }

    public function setDescription($description)
    {
        $this->description = $description;
    }

    public function setCreated(DateTime $created)
    {
        $this->created = $created;
    }

    public function getCreated()
    {
        return $this->created;
    }

    public function setStatus($status)
    {
        $this->status = $status;
    }

    public function getStatus()
    {
        return $this->status;
    }
}

<?php
// src/User.php
/**
 * @Entity @Table(name="users")
 */
class User
{
    /**
     * @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer")
     * @var int
     */
    protected $id;
    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     * @var string
     */
    protected $name;

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

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

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

All of the properties discussed so far are simple string and integer values, for example the id fields of the entities, their names, description, status and change dates. With just the scalar values this model cannot describe the dynamics that we want. We want to model references between entities.

References between objects are foreign keys in the database. You never have to work with the foreign keys directly, only with objects that represent the foreign key through their own identity.

For every foreign key you either have a Doctrine ManyToOne or OneToOne association. On the inverse sides of these foreign keys you can have OneToMany associations. Obviously you can have ManyToMany associations that connect two tables with each other through a join table with two foreign keys.

Now that you know the basics about references in Doctrine, we can extend the domain model to match the requirements:

<?php
// src/Bug.php
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

class Bug
{
    // ... (previous code)

    protected $products;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->products = new ArrayCollection();
    }
}

<?php
// src/User.php
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
class User
{
    // ... (previous code)

    protected $reportedBugs;
    protected $assignedBugs;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->reportedBugs = new ArrayCollection();
        $this->assignedBugs = new ArrayCollection();
    }
}

Whenever an entity is recreated from the database, an Collection implementation of the type Doctrine is injected into your entity instead of an array. Compared to the ArrayCollection this implementation helps the Doctrine ORM understand the changes that have happened to the collection which are noteworthy for persistence.

Warning

Lazy load proxies always contain an instance of Doctrine’s EntityManager and all its dependencies. Therefore a var_dump() will possibly dump a very large recursive structure which is impossible to render and read. You have to use Doctrine\Common\Util\Debug::dump() to restrict the dumping to a human readable level. Additionally you should be aware that dumping the EntityManager to a Browser may take several minutes, and the Debug::dump() method just ignores any occurrences of it in Proxy instances.

Because we only work with collections for the references we must be careful to implement a bidirectional reference in the domain model. The concept of owning or inverse side of a relation is central to this notion and should always be kept in mind. The following assumptions are made about relations and have to be followed to be able to work with Doctrine 2. These assumptions are not unique to Doctrine 2 but are best practices in handling database relations and Object-Relational Mapping.

Changes to Collections are saved or updated, when the entity on the owning side of the collection is saved or updated.
Saving an Entity at the inverse side of a relation never triggers a persist operation to changes to the collection.
In a one-to-one relation the entity holding the foreign key of the related entity on its own database table is always the owning side of the relation.
In a many-to-many relation, both sides can be the owning side of the relation. However in a bi-directional many-to-many relation only one is allowed to be.
In a many-to-one relation the Many-side is the owning side by default, because it holds the foreign key.
The OneToMany side of a relation is inverse by default, since the foreign key is saved on the Many side. A OneToMany relation can only be the owning side, if its implemented using a ManyToMany relation with join table and restricting the one side to allow only UNIQUE values per database constraint.

Note

Consistency of bi-directional references on the inverse side of a relation have to be managed in userland application code. Doctrine cannot magically update your collections to be consistent.

In the case of Users and Bugs we have references back and forth to the assigned and reported bugs from a user, making this relation bi-directional. We have to change the code to ensure consistency of the bi-directional reference:

<?php
// src/Bug.php
class Bug
{
    // ... (previous code)

    protected $engineer;
    protected $reporter;

    public function setEngineer($engineer)
    {
        $engineer->assignedToBug($this);
        $this->engineer = $engineer;
    }

    public function setReporter($reporter)
    {
        $reporter->addReportedBug($this);
        $this->reporter = $reporter;
    }

    public function getEngineer()
    {
        return $this->engineer;
    }

    public function getReporter()
    {
        return $this->reporter;
    }
}

<?php
// src/User.php
class User
{
    // ... (previous code)

    protected $reportedBugs = null;
    protected $assignedBugs = null;

    public function addReportedBug($bug)
    {
        $this->reportedBugs[] = $bug;
    }

    public function assignedToBug($bug)
    {
        $this->assignedBugs[] = $bug;
    }
}

I chose to name the inverse methods in past-tense, which should indicate that the actual assigning has already taken place and the methods are only used for ensuring consistency of the references. This approach is my personal preference, you can choose whatever method to make this work.

You can see from User::addReportedBug() and User::assignedToBug() that using this method in userland alone would not add the Bug to the collection of the owning side in Bug::$reporter or Bug::$engineer. Using these methods and calling Doctrine for persistence would not update the collections representation in the database.

Only using Bug::setEngineer() or Bug::setReporter() correctly saves the relation information. We also set both collection instance variables to protected, however with PHP 5.3’s new features Doctrine is still able to use Reflection to set and get values from protected and private properties.

The Bug::$reporter and Bug::$engineer properties are Many-To-One relations, which point to a User. In a normalized relational model the foreign key is saved on the Bug’s table, hence in our object-relation model the Bug is at the owning side of the relation. You should always make sure that the use-cases of your domain model should drive which side is an inverse or owning one in your Doctrine mapping. In our example, whenever a new bug is saved or an engineer is assigned to the bug, we don’t want to update the User to persist the reference, but the Bug. This is the case with the Bug being at the owning side of the relation.

Bugs reference Products by an uni-directional ManyToMany relation in the database that points from Bugs to Products.

<?php
// src/Bug.php
class Bug
{
    // ... (previous code)

    protected $products = null;

    public function assignToProduct($product)
    {
        $this->products[] = $product;
    }

    public function getProducts()
    {
        return $this->products;
    }
}

We are now finished with the domain model given the requirements. Now we continue adding metadata mappings for the User and Bug as we did for the Product before:

PHP

<?php
// src/Bug.php
/**
 * @Entity @Table(name="bugs")
 **/
class Bug
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue
     **/
    protected $id;
    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     **/
    protected $description;
    /**
     * @Column(type="datetime")
     **/
    protected $created;
    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     **/
    protected $status;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="assignedBugs")
     **/
    protected $engineer;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="reportedBugs")
     **/
    protected $reporter;

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Product")
     **/
    protected $products;

    // ... (other code)
}

XML

<!-- config/xml/Bug.dcm.xml -->
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="Bug" table="bugs">
        <id name="id" type="integer">
            <generator strategy="AUTO" />
        </id>

        <field name="description" type="text" />
        <field name="created" type="datetime" />
        <field name="status" type="string" />

        <many-to-one target-entity="User" field="reporter" inversed-by="reportedBugs" />
        <many-to-one target-entity="User" field="engineer" inversed-by="assignedBugs" />

        <many-to-many target-entity="Product" field="products" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

# config/yaml/Bug.dcm.yml
Bug:
  type: entity
  table: bugs
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    description:
      type: text
    created:
      type: datetime
    status:
      type: string
  manyToOne:
    reporter:
      targetEntity: User
      inversedBy: reportedBugs
    engineer:
      targetEntity: User
      inversedBy: assignedBugs
  manyToMany:
    products:
      targetEntity: Product

Here we have the entity, id and primitive type definitions. The column names are used from the Zend_Db_Table examples and have different names than the properties on the Bug class. Additionally for the “created” field it is specified that it is of the Type “DATETIME”, which translates the YYYY-mm-dd HH:mm:ss Database format into a PHP DateTime instance and back.

After the field definitions the two qualified references to the user entity are defined. They are created by the many-to-one tag. The class name of the related entity has to be specified with the target-entity attribute, which is enough information for the database mapper to access the foreign-table. Since reporter and engineer are on the owning side of a bi-directional relation we also have to specify the inversed-by attribute. They have to point to the field names on the inverse side of the relationship. We will see in the next example that the inversed-by attribute has a counterpart mapped-by which makes that the inverse side.

The last missing property is the Bug::$products collection. It holds all products where the specific bug is occurring in. Again you have to define the target-entity and field attributes on the many-to-many tag. Furthermore you have to specify the details of the many-to-many join-table and its foreign key columns. The definition is rather complex, however relying on the XML auto-completion I got it working easily, although I forget the schema details all the time.

The last missing definition is that of the User entity:

PHP

<?php
// src/User.php
/**
 * @Entity @Table(name="users")
 **/
class User
{
    /**
     * @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer")
     * @var int
     **/
    protected $id;

    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     * @var string
     **/
    protected $name;

    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Bug", mappedBy="reporter")
     * @var Bug[]
     **/
    protected $reportedBugs = null;

    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Bug", mappedBy="engineer")
     * @var Bug[]
     **/
    protected $assignedBugs = null;

    // .. (other code)
}

XML

<!-- config/xml/User.dcm.xml -->
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

     <entity name="User" table="users">
         <id name="id" type="integer">
             <generator strategy="AUTO" />
         </id>

         <field name="name" type="string" />

         <one-to-many target-entity="Bug" field="reportedBugs" mapped-by="reporter" />
         <one-to-many target-entity="Bug" field="assignedBugs" mapped-by="engineer" />
     </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

# config/xml/User.dcm.yml
User:
  type: entity
  table: users
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      type: string
  oneToMany:
    reportedBugs:
      targetEntity: Bug
      mappedBy: reporter
    assignedBugs:
      targetEntity: Bug
      mappedBy: engineer

Here are some new things to mention about the one-to-many tags. Remember that we discussed about the inverse and owning side. Now both reportedBugs and assignedBugs are inverse relations, which means the join details have already been defined on the owning side. Therefore we only have to specify the property on the Bug class that holds the owning sides.

This example has a fair overview of the most basic features of the metadata definition language.

Implementing more Requirements¶

For starters we need a create user entities:

<?php
// create_user.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$newUsername = $argv[1];

$user = new User();
$user->setName($newUsername);

$entityManager->persist($user);
$entityManager->flush();

echo "Created User with ID " . $user->getId() . "\n";

Now call:

$ php create_user.php beberlei

We now have the data to create a bug and the code for this scenario may look like this:

<?php
// create_bug.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$theReporterId = $argv[1];
$theDefaultEngineerId = $argv[1];
$productIds = explode(",", $argv[3]);

$reporter = $entityManager->find("User", $theReporterId);
$engineer = $entityManager->find("User", $theDefaultEngineerId);
if (!$reporter || !$engineer) {
    echo "No reporter and/or engineer found for the input.\n";
    exit(1);
}

$bug = new Bug();
$bug->setDescription("Something does not work!");
$bug->setCreated(new DateTime("now"));
$bug->setStatus("OPEN");

foreach ($productIds AS $productId) {
    $product = $entityManager->find("Product", $productId);
    $bug->assignToProduct($product);
}

$bug->setReporter($reporter);
$bug->setEngineer($engineer);

$entityManager->persist($bug);
$entityManager->flush();

echo "Your new Bug Id: ".$bug->getId()."\n";

Since we only have one user and product, probably with the ID of 1, we can call this script with:

php create_bug.php 1 1 1

This is the first contact with the read API of the EntityManager, showing that a call to EntityManager#find($name, $id) returns a single instance of an entity queried by primary key. Besides this we see the persist + flush pattern again to save the Bug into the database.

See how simple relating Bug, Reporter, Engineer and Products is done by using the discussed methods in the “A first prototype” section. The UnitOfWork will detect this relations when flush is called and relate them in the database appropriately.

Queries for Application Use-Cases¶

List of Bugs¶

Using the previous examples we can fill up the database quite a bit, however we now need to discuss how to query the underlying mapper for the required view representations. When opening the application, bugs can be paginated through a list-view, which is the first read-only use-case:

<?php
// list_bugs.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$dql = "SELECT b, e, r FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e JOIN b.reporter r ORDER BY b.created DESC";

$query = $entityManager->createQuery($dql);
$query->setMaxResults(30);
$bugs = $query->getResult();

foreach($bugs AS $bug) {
    echo $bug->getDescription()." - ".$bug->getCreated()->format('d.m.Y')."\n";
    echo "    Reported by: ".$bug->getReporter()->getName()."\n";
    echo "    Assigned to: ".$bug->getEngineer()->getName()."\n";
    foreach($bug->getProducts() AS $product) {
        echo "    Platform: ".$product->getName()."\n";
    }
    echo "\n";
}

The DQL Query in this example fetches the 30 most recent bugs with their respective engineer and reporter in one single SQL statement. The console output of this script is then:

Something does not work! - 02.04.2010
    Reported by: beberlei
    Assigned to: beberlei
    Platform: My Product

Note

Dql is not Sql

You may wonder why we start writing SQL at the beginning of this use-case. Don’t we use an ORM to get rid of all the endless hand-writing of SQL? Doctrine introduces DQL which is best described as object-query-language and is a dialect of OQL and similar to HQL or JPQL. It does not know the concept of columns and tables, but only those of Entity-Class and property. Using the Metadata we defined before it allows for very short distinctive and powerful queries.

An important reason why DQL is favourable to the Query API of most ORMs is its similarity to SQL. The DQL language allows query constructs that most ORMs don’t, GROUP BY even with HAVING, Sub-selects, Fetch-Joins of nested classes, mixed results with entities and scalar data such as COUNT() results and much more. Using DQL you should seldom come to the point where you want to throw your ORM into the dumpster, because it doesn’t support some the more powerful SQL concepts.

Besides handwriting DQL you can however also use the QueryBuilder retrieved by calling $entityManager->createQueryBuilder() which is a Query Object around the DQL language.

As a last resort you can however also use Native SQL and a description of the result set to retrieve entities from the database. DQL boils down to a Native SQL statement and a ResultSetMapping instance itself. Using Native SQL you could even use stored procedures for data retrieval, or make use of advanced non-portable database queries like PostgreSql’s recursive queries.

Array Hydration of the Bug List¶

In the previous use-case we retrieved the result as their respective object instances. We are not limited to retrieving objects only from Doctrine however. For a simple list view like the previous one we only need read access to our entities and can switch the hydration from objects to simple PHP arrays instead. This can obviously yield considerable performance benefits for read-only requests.

Implementing the same list view as before using array hydration we can rewrite our code:

<?php
// list_bugs_array.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$dql = "SELECT b, e, r, p FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e ".
       "JOIN b.reporter r JOIN b.products p ORDER BY b.created DESC";
$query = $entityManager->createQuery($dql);
$bugs = $query->getArrayResult();

foreach ($bugs AS $bug) {
    echo $bug['description'] . " - " . $bug['created']->format('d.m.Y')."\n";
    echo "    Reported by: ".$bug['reporter']['name']."\n";
    echo "    Assigned to: ".$bug['engineer']['name']."\n";
    foreach($bug['products'] AS $product) {
        echo "    Platform: ".$product['name']."\n";
    }
    echo "\n";
}

There is one significant difference in the DQL query however, we have to add an additional fetch-join for the products connected to a bug. The resulting SQL query for this single select statement is pretty large, however still more efficient to retrieve compared to hydrating objects.

Find by Primary Key¶

The next Use-Case is displaying a Bug by primary key. This could be done using DQL as in the previous example with a where clause, however there is a convenience method on the EntityManager that handles loading by primary key, which we have already seen in the write scenarios:

<?php
// show_bug.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$theBugId = $argv[1];

$bug = $entityManager->find("Bug", (int)$theBugId);

echo "Bug: ".$bug->getDescription()."\n";
echo "Engineer: ".$bug->getEngineer()->getName()."\n";

The output of the engineers name is fetched from the database! What is happening?

Since we only retrieved the bug by primary key both the engineer and reporter are not immediately loaded from the database but are replaced by LazyLoading proxies. These proxies will load behind the scenes, when the first method is called on them.

Sample code of this proxy generated code can be found in the specified Proxy Directory, it looks like:

<?php
namespace MyProject\Proxies;

/**
 * THIS CLASS WAS GENERATED BY THE DOCTRINE ORM. DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE.
 **/
class UserProxy extends \User implements \Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\Proxy
{
    // .. lazy load code here

    public function addReportedBug($bug)
    {
        $this->_load();
        return parent::addReportedBug($bug);
    }

    public function assignedToBug($bug)
    {
        $this->_load();
        return parent::assignedToBug($bug);
    }
}

See how upon each method call the proxy is lazily loaded from the database?

The call prints:

$ php show_bug.php 1
Bug: Something does not work!
Engineer: beberlei

Dashboard of the User¶

For the next use-case we want to retrieve the dashboard view, a list of all open bugs the user reported or was assigned to. This will be achieved using DQL again, this time with some WHERE clauses and usage of bound parameters:

<?php
// dashboard.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$theUserId = $argv[1];

$dql = "SELECT b, e, r FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e JOIN b.reporter r ".
       "WHERE b.status = 'OPEN' AND (e.id = ?1 OR r.id = ?1) ORDER BY b.created DESC";

$myBugs = $entityManager->createQuery($dql)
                        ->setParameter(1, $theUserId)
                        ->setMaxResults(15)
                        ->getResult();

echo "You have created or assigned to " . count($myBugs) . " open bugs:\n\n";

foreach ($myBugs AS $bug) {
    echo $bug->getId() . " - " . $bug->getDescription()."\n";
}

Number of Bugs¶

Until now we only retrieved entities or their array representation. Doctrine also supports the retrieval of non-entities through DQL. These values are called “scalar result values” and may even be aggregate values using COUNT, SUM, MIN, MAX or AVG functions.

We will need this knowledge to retrieve the number of open bugs grouped by product:

<?php
// products.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$dql = "SELECT p.id, p.name, count(b.id) AS openBugs FROM Bug b ".
       "JOIN b.products p WHERE b.status = 'OPEN' GROUP BY p.id";
$productBugs = $entityManager->createQuery($dql)->getScalarResult();

foreach($productBugs as $productBug) {
    echo $productBug['name']." has " . $productBug['openBugs'] . " open bugs!\n";
}

Updating Entities¶

There is a single use-case missing from the requirements, Engineers should be able to close a bug. This looks like:

<?php
// src/Bug.php

class Bug
{
    public function close()
    {
        $this->status = "CLOSE";
    }
}

<?php
// close_bug.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$theBugId = $argv[1];

$bug = $entityManager->find("Bug", (int)$theBugId);
$bug->close();

$entityManager->flush();

When retrieving the Bug from the database it is inserted into the IdentityMap inside the UnitOfWork of Doctrine. This means your Bug with exactly this id can only exist once during the whole request no matter how often you call EntityManager#find(). It even detects entities that are hydrated using DQL and are already present in the Identity Map.

When flush is called the EntityManager loops over all the entities in the identity map and performs a comparison between the values originally retrieved from the database and those values the entity currently has. If at least one of these properties is different the entity is scheduled for an UPDATE against the database. Only the changed columns are updated, which offers a pretty good performance improvement compared to updating all the properties.

Entity Repositories¶

For now we have not discussed how to separate the Doctrine query logic from your model. In Doctrine 1 there was the concept of Doctrine_Table instances for this separation. The similar concept in Doctrine2 is called Entity Repositories, integrating the repository pattern at the heart of Doctrine.

Every Entity uses a default repository by default and offers a bunch of convenience methods that you can use to query for instances of that Entity. Take for example our Product entity. If we wanted to Query by name, we can use:

<?php
$product = $entityManager->getRepository('Product')
                         ->findOneBy(array('name' => $productName));

The method findOneBy() takes an array of fields or association keys and the values to match against.

If you want to find all entities matching a condition you can use findBy(), for example querying for all closed bugs:

<?php
$bugs = $entityManager->getRepository('Bug')
                      ->findBy(array('status' => 'CLOSED'));

foreach ($bugs AS $bug) {
    // do stuff
}

Compared to DQL these query methods are falling short of functionality very fast. Doctrine offers you a convenient way to extend the functionalities of the default EntityRepository and put all the specialized DQL query logic on it. For this you have to create a subclass of Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository, in our case a BugRepository and group all the previously discussed query functionality in it:

<?php
// src/BugRepository.php

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;

class BugRepository extends EntityRepository
{
    public function getRecentBugs($number = 30)
    {
        $dql = "SELECT b, e, r FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e JOIN b.reporter r ORDER BY b.created DESC";

        $query = $this->getEntityManager()->createQuery($dql);
        $query->setMaxResults($number);
        return $query->getResult();
    }

    public function getRecentBugsArray($number = 30)
    {
        $dql = "SELECT b, e, r, p FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e ".
               "JOIN b.reporter r JOIN b.products p ORDER BY b.created DESC";
        $query = $this->getEntityManager()->createQuery($dql);
        $query->setMaxResults($number);
        return $query->getArrayResult();
    }

    public function getUsersBugs($userId, $number = 15)
    {
        $dql = "SELECT b, e, r FROM Bug b JOIN b.engineer e JOIN b.reporter r ".
               "WHERE b.status = 'OPEN' AND e.id = ?1 OR r.id = ?1 ORDER BY b.created DESC";

        return $this->getEntityManager()->createQuery($dql)
                             ->setParameter(1, $userId)
                             ->setMaxResults($number)
                             ->getResult();
    }

    public function getOpenBugsByProduct()
    {
        $dql = "SELECT p.id, p.name, count(b.id) AS openBugs FROM Bug b ".
               "JOIN b.products p WHERE b.status = 'OPEN' GROUP BY p.id";
        return $this->getEntityManager()->createQuery($dql)->getScalarResult();
    }
}

Don’t forget to add a require_once call for this class to the bootstrap.php

To be able to use this query logic through $this->getEntityManager()->getRepository('Bug') we have to adjust the metadata slightly.

PHP

<?php
/**
 * @Entity(repositoryClass="BugRepository")
 * @Table(name="bugs")
 **/
class Bug
{
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

      <entity name="Bug" table="bugs" repository-class="BugRepository">

      </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Bug:
  type: entity
  repositoryClass: BugRepository

Now we can remove our query logic in all the places and instead use them through the EntityRepository. As an example here is the code of the first use case “List of Bugs”:

<?php
// list_bugs_repository.php
require_once "bootstrap.php";

$bugs = $entityManager->getRepository('Bug')->getRecentBugs();

foreach($bugs AS $bug) {
    echo $bug->getDescription()." - ".$bug->getCreated()->format('d.m.Y')."\n";
    echo "    Reported by: ".$bug->getReporter()->getName()."\n";
    echo "    Assigned to: ".$bug->getEngineer()->getName()."\n";
    foreach($bug->getProducts() AS $product) {
        echo "    Platform: ".$product->getName()."\n";
    }
    echo "\n";
}

Using EntityRepositories you can avoid coupling your model with specific query logic. You can also re-use query logic easily throughout your application.

Conclusion¶

This tutorial is over here, I hope you had fun. Additional content will be added to this tutorial incrementally, topics will include:

More on Association Mappings
Lifecycle Events triggered in the UnitOfWork
Ordering of Collections

Additional details on all the topics discussed here can be found in the respective manual chapters.

Getting Started: Database First¶

Note

Development Workflows

When you Code First, you start with developing Objects and then map them onto your database. When you Model First, you are modelling your application using tools (for example UML) and generate database schema and PHP code from this model. When you have a Database First, you already have a database schema and generate the corresponding PHP code from it.

Note

This getting started guide is in development.

Development of new applications often starts with an existing database schema. When the database schema is the starting point for your application, then development is said to use the Database First approach to Doctrine.

In this workflow you would modify the database schema first and then regenerate the PHP code to use with this schema. You need a flexible code-generator for this task and up to Doctrine 2.2, the code generator hasn’t been flexible enough to achieve this.

We spinned off a subproject, Doctrine CodeGenerator, that will fill this gap and allow you to do Database First development.

Getting Started: Model First¶

Note

Development Workflows

When you Code First, you start with developing Objects and then map them onto your database. When you Model First, you are modelling your application using tools (for example UML) and generate database schema and PHP code from this model. When you have a Database First, then you already have a database schema and generate the corresponding PHP code from it.

Note

This getting started guide is in development.

There are applications when you start with a high-level description of the model using modelling tools such as UML. Modelling tools could also be Excel, XML or CSV files that describe the model in some structured way. If your application is using a modelling tool, then the development workflow is said to be a Model First approach to Doctrine2.

In this workflow you always change the model description and then regenerate both PHP code and database schema from this model.

Working with Indexed Associations¶

Note

This feature is scheduled for version 2.1 of Doctrine and not included in the 2.0.x series.

Doctrine 2 collections are modelled after PHPs native arrays. PHP arrays are an ordered hashmap, but in the first version of Doctrine keys retrieved from the database were always numerical unless INDEX BY was used. Starting with Doctrine 2.1 you can index your collections by a value in the related entity. This is a first step towards full ordered hashmap support through the Doctrine ORM. The feature works like an implicit INDEX BY for the selected association but has several downsides also:

You have to manage both the key and field if you want to change the index by field value.
On each request the keys are regenerated from the field value not from the previous collection key.
Values of the Index-By keys are never considered during persistence, it only exists for accessing purposes.
Fields that are used for the index by feature HAVE to be unique in the database. The behavior for multiple entities with the same index-by field value is undefined.

As an example we will design a simple stock exchange list view. The domain consists of the entity Stock and Market where each Stock has a symbol and is traded on a single market. Instead of having a numerical list of stocks traded on a market they will be indexed by their symbol, which is unique across all markets.

Mapping Indexed Associations¶

You can map indexed associations by adding:

indexBy attribute to any @OneToMany or @ManyToMany annotation.

index-by attribute to any <one-to-many /> or <many-to-many /> xml element.

indexBy: key-value pair to any association defined in manyToMany: or oneToMany: YAML mapping files.

The code and mappings for the Market entity looks like this:

PHP

<?php
namespace Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange;

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="exchange_markets")
 */
class Market
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue
     * @var int
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     * @var string
     */
    private $name;

    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Stock", mappedBy="market", indexBy="symbol")
     * @var Stock[]
     */
    private $stocks;

    public function __construct($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
        $this->stocks = new ArrayCollection();
    }

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

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

    public function addStock(Stock $stock)
    {
        $this->stocks[$stock->getSymbol()] = $stock;
    }

    public function getStock($symbol)
    {
        if (!isset($this->stocks[$symbol])) {
            throw new \InvalidArgumentException("Symbol is not traded on this market.");
        }

        return $this->stocks[$symbol];
    }

    public function getStocks()
    {
        return $this->stocks->toArray();
    }
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          http://www.doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Market">
        <id name="id" type="integer">
            <generator strategy="AUTO" />
        </id>

        <field name="name" type="string"/>

        <one-to-many target-entity="Stock" mapped-by="market" field="stocks" index-by="symbol" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Market:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      type:string
  oneToMany:
    stocks:
      targetEntity: Stock
      mappedBy: market
      indexBy: symbol

Inside the addStock() method you can see how we directly set the key of the association to the symbol, so that we can work with the indexed association directly after invoking addStock(). Inside getStock($symbol) we pick a stock traded on the particular market by symbol. If this stock doesn’t exist an exception is thrown.

The Stock entity doesn’t contain any special instructions that are new, but for completeness here are the code and mappings for it:

PHP

<?php
namespace Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="exchange_stocks")
 */
class Stock
{
    /**
     * @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer")
     * @var int
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * For real this column would have to be unique=true. But I want to test behavior of non-unique overrides.
     *
     * @Column(type="string", unique=true)
     */
    private $symbol;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Market", inversedBy="stocks")
     * @var Market
     */
    private $market;

    public function __construct($symbol, Market $market)
    {
        $this->symbol = $symbol;
        $this->market = $market;
        $market->addStock($this);
    }

    public function getSymbol()
    {
        return $this->symbol;
    }
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          http://www.doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Stock">
        <id name="id" type="integer">
            <generator strategy="AUTO" />
        </id>

        <field name="symbol" type="string" unique="true" />
        <many-to-one target-entity="Market" field="market" inversed-by="stocks" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Stock:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    symbol:
      type: string
  manyToOne:
    market:
      targetEntity: Market
      inversedBy: stocks

Querying indexed associations¶

Now that we defined the stocks collection to be indexed by symbol we can take a look at some code, that makes use of the indexing.

First we will populate our database with two example stocks traded on a single market:

<?php
// $em is the EntityManager

$market = new Market("Some Exchange");
$stock1 = new Stock("AAPL", $market);
$stock2 = new Stock("GOOG", $market);

$em->persist($market);
$em->persist($stock1);
$em->persist($stock2);
$em->flush();

This code is not particular interesting since the indexing feature is not yet used. In a new request we could now query for the market:

<?php
// $em is the EntityManager
$marketId = 1;
$symbol = "AAPL";

$market = $em->find("Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Market", $marketId);

// Access the stocks by symbol now:
$stock = $market->getStock($symbol);

echo $stock->getSymbol(); // will print "AAPL"

The implementation Market::addStock() in combination with indexBy allows to access the collection consistently by the Stock symbol. It does not matter if Stock is managed by Doctrine or not.

The same applies to DQL queries: The indexBy configuration acts as implicit “INDEX BY” to a join association.

<?php
// $em is the EntityManager
$marketId = 1;
$symbol = "AAPL";

$dql = "SELECT m, s FROM Doctrine\Tests\Models\StockExchange\Market m JOIN m.stocks s WHERE m.id = ?1";
$market = $em->createQuery($dql)
             ->setParameter(1, $marketId)
             ->getSingleResult();

// Access the stocks by symbol now:
$stock = $market->getStock($symbol);

echo $stock->getSymbol(); // will print "AAPL"

If you want to use INDEX BY explicitly on an indexed association you are free to do so. Additionally indexed associations also work with the Collection::slice() functionality, no matter if marked as LAZY or EXTRA_LAZY.

Outlook into the Future¶

For the inverse side of a many-to-many associations there will be a way to persist the keys and the order as a third and fourth parameter into the join table. This feature is discussed in DDC-213 This feature cannot be implemented for One-To-Many associations, because they are never the owning side.

Extra Lazy Associations¶

New in version 2.1.

In many cases associations between entities can get pretty large. Even in a simple scenario like a blog. where posts can be commented, you always have to assume that a post draws hundreds of comments. In Doctrine 2.0 if you accessed an association it would always get loaded completely into memory. This can lead to pretty serious performance problems, if your associations contain several hundreds or thousands of entities.

With Doctrine 2.1 a feature called Extra Lazy is introduced for associations. Associations are marked as Lazy by default, which means the whole collection object for an association is populated the first time its accessed. If you mark an association as extra lazy the following methods on collections can be called without triggering a full load of the collection:

Collection#contains($entity)
Collection#count()
Collection#slice($offset, $length = null)

For each of this three methods the following semantics apply:

For each call, if the Collection is not yet loaded, issue a straight SELECT statement against the database.
For each call, if the collection is already loaded, fallback to the default functionality for lazy collections. No additional SELECT statements are executed.

Additionally even with Doctrine 2.0 the following methods do not trigger the collection load:

Collection#add($entity)
Collection#offsetSet($key, $entity) - ArrayAccess with no specific key $coll[] = $entity, it does not work when setting specific keys like $coll[0] = $entity.

With extra lazy collections you can now not only add entities to large collections but also paginate them easily using a combination of count and slice.

Enabling Extra-Lazy Associations¶

The mapping configuration is simple. Instead of using the default value of fetch="LAZY" you have to switch to extra lazy as shown in these examples:

PHP

<?php
namespace Doctrine\Tests\Models\CMS;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class CmsGroup
{
    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="CmsUser", mappedBy="groups", fetch="EXTRA_LAZY")
     */
    public $users;
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          http://www.doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="Doctrine\Tests\Models\CMS\CmsGroup">
        <!-- ... -->
        <many-to-many field="users" target-entity="CmsUser" mapped-by="groups" fetch="EXTRA_LAZY" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Doctrine\Tests\Models\CMS\CmsGroup:
  type: entity
  # ...
  manyToMany:
    users:
      targetEntity: CmsUser
      mappedBy: groups
      fetch: EXTRA_LAZY

Composite and Foreign Keys as Primary Key¶

New in version 2.1.

Doctrine 2 supports composite primary keys natively. Composite keys are a very powerful relational database concept and we took good care to make sure Doctrine 2 supports as many of the composite primary key use-cases. For Doctrine 2.0 composite keys of primitive data-types are supported, for Doctrine 2.1 even foreign keys as primary keys are supported.

This tutorial shows how the semantics of composite primary keys work and how they map to the database.

General Considerations¶

Every entity with a composite key cannot use an id generator other than “ASSIGNED”. That means the ID fields have to have their values set before you call EntityManager#persist($entity).

Primitive Types only¶

Even in version 2.0 you can have composite keys as long as they only consist of the primitive types integer and string. Suppose you want to create a database of cars and use the model-name and year of production as primary keys:

PHP

<?php
namespace VehicleCatalogue\Model;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Car
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="string") */
    private $name;
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") */
    private $year

    public function __construct($name, $year)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
        $this->year = $year;
    }

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

    public function getYearOfProduction()
    {
        return $this->year;
    }
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          http://www.doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="VehicleCatalogue\Model\Car">
        <id field="name" type="string" />
        <id field="year" type="integer" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

VehicleCatalogue\Model\Car:
  type: entity
  id:
    name:
      type: string
    year:
      type: integer

Now you can use this entity:

<?php
namespace VehicleCatalogue\Model;

// $em is the EntityManager

$car = new Car("Audi A8", 2010);
$em->persist($car);
$em->flush();

And for querying you can use arrays to both DQL and EntityRepositories:

<?php
namespace VehicleCatalogue\Model;

// $em is the EntityManager
$audi = $em->find("VehicleCatalogue\Model\Car", array("name" => "Audi A8", "year" => 2010));

$dql = "SELECT c FROM VehicleCatalogue\Model\Car c WHERE c.id = ?1";
$audi = $em->createQuery($dql)
           ->setParameter(1, array("name" => "Audi A8", "year" => 2010))
           ->getSingleResult();

You can also use this entity in associations. Doctrine will then generate two foreign keys one for name and to year to the related entities.

Note

This example shows how you can nicely solve the requirement for existing values before EntityManager#persist(): By adding them as mandatory values for the constructor.

Identity through foreign Entities¶

Note

Identity through foreign entities is only supported with Doctrine 2.1

There are tons of use-cases where the identity of an Entity should be determined by the entity of one or many parent entities.

Dynamic Attributes of an Entity (for example Article). Each Article has many attributes with primary key “article_id” and “attribute_name”.
Address object of a Person, the primary key of the address is “user_id”. This is not a case of a composite primary key, but the identity is derived through a foreign entity and a foreign key.
Join Tables with metadata can be modelled as Entity, for example connections between two articles with a little description and a score.

The semantics of mapping identity through foreign entities are easy:

Only allowed on Many-To-One or One-To-One associations.
Plug an @Id annotation onto every association.
Set an attribute association-key with the field name of the association in XML.
Set a key associationKey: with the field name of the association in YAML.

Use-Case 1: Dynamic Attributes¶

We keep up the example of an Article with arbitrary attributes, the mapping looks like this:

PHP

<?php
namespace Application\Model;

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Article
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;
    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $title;

    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="ArticleAttribute", mappedBy="article", cascade={"ALL"}, indexBy="attribute")
     */
    private $attributes;

    public function addAttribute($name, $value)
    {
        $this->attributes[$name] = new ArticleAttribute($name, $value, $this);
    }
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class ArticleAttribute
{
    /** @Id @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Article", inversedBy="attributes") */
    private $article;

    /** @Id @Column(type="string") */
    private $attribute;

    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $value;

    public function __construct($name, $value, $article)
    {
        $this->attribute = $name;
        $this->value = $value;
        $this->article = $article;
    }
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

     <entity name="Application\Model\ArticleAttribute">
        <id name="article" association-key="true" />
        <id name="attribute" type="string" />

        <field name="value" type="string" />

        <many-to-one field="article" target-entity="Article" inversed-by="attributes" />
     <entity>

</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Application\Model\ArticleAttribute:
  type: entity
  id:
    article:
      associationKey: true
    attribute:
      type: string
  fields:
    value:
      type: string
  manyToOne:
    article:
      targetEntity: Article
      inversedBy: attributes

Use-Case 2: Simple Derived Identity¶

Sometimes you have the requirement that two objects are related by a One-To-One association and that the dependent class should re-use the primary key of the class it depends on. One good example for this is a user-address relationship:

PHP

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 */
class User
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Address
{
    /** @Id @OneToOne(targetEntity="User") */
    private $user;
}

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO

Address:
  type: entity
  id:
    user:
      associationKey: true
  oneToOne:
    user:
      targetEntity: User

Use-Case 3: Join-Table with Metadata¶

In the classic order product shop example there is the concept of the order item which contains references to order and product and additional data such as the amount of products purchased and maybe even the current price.

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/** @Entity */
class Order
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;

    /** @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Customer") */
    private $customer;
    /** @OneToMany(targetEntity="OrderItem", mappedBy="order") */
    private $items;

    /** @Column(type="boolean") */
    private $payed = false;
    /** @Column(type="boolean") */
    private $shipped = false;
    /** @Column(type="datetime") */
    private $created;

    public function __construct(Customer $customer)
    {
        $this->customer = $customer;
        $this->items = new ArrayCollection();
        $this->created = new \DateTime("now");
    }
}

/** @Entity */
class Product
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;

    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $name;

    /** @Column(type="decimal") */
    private $currentPrice;

    public function getCurrentPrice()
    {
        return $this->currentPrice;
    }
}

/** @Entity */
class OrderItem
{
    /** @Id @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Order") */
    private $order;

    /** @Id @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Product") */
    private $product;

    /** @Column(type="integer") */
    private $amount = 1;

    /** @Column(type="decimal") */
    private $offeredPrice;

    public function __construct(Order $order, Product $product, $amount = 1)
    {
        $this->order = $order;
        $this->product = $product;
        $this->offeredPrice = $product->getCurrentPrice();
    }
}

Performance Considerations¶

Using composite keys always comes with a performance hit compared to using entities with a simple surrogate key. This performance impact is mostly due to additional PHP code that is necessary to handle this kind of keys, most notably when using derived identifiers.

On the SQL side there is not much overhead as no additional or unexpected queries have to be executed to manage entities with derived foreign keys.

Ordering To-Many Associations¶

There are use-cases when you’ll want to sort collections when they are retrieved from the database. In userland you do this as long as you haven’t initially saved an entity with its associations into the database. To retrieve a sorted collection from the database you can use the @OrderBy annotation with an collection that specifies an DQL snippet that is appended to all queries with this collection.

Additional to any @OneToMany or @ManyToMany annotation you can specify the @OrderBy in the following way:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group")
     * @OrderBy({"name" = "ASC"})
     **/
    private $groups;
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="User">
        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
            <order-by>
                <order-by-field name="name" direction="ASC" />
            </order-by>
        </many-to-many>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      orderBy: { 'name': 'ASC' }
      targetEntity: Group
      joinTable:
        name: users_groups
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id

The DQL Snippet in OrderBy is only allowed to consist of unqualified, unquoted field names and of an optional ASC/DESC positional statement. Multiple Fields are separated by a comma (,). The referenced field names have to exist on the targetEntity class of the @ManyToMany or @OneToMany annotation.

The semantics of this feature can be described as follows.

@OrderBy acts as an implicit ORDER BY clause for the given fields, that is appended to all the explicitly given ORDER BY items.
All collections of the ordered type are always retrieved in an ordered fashion.
To keep the database impact low, these implicit ORDER BY items are only added to an DQL Query if the collection is fetch joined in the DQL query.

Given our previously defined example, the following would not add ORDER BY, since g is not fetch joined:

SELECT u FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE SIZE(g) > 10

However the following:

SELECT u, g FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE u.id = 10

...would internally be rewritten to:

SELECT u, g FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE u.id = 10 ORDER BY g.name ASC

You can reverse the order with an explicit DQL ORDER BY:

SELECT u, g FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE u.id = 10 ORDER BY g.name DESC

...is internally rewritten to:

SELECT u, g FROM User u JOIN u.groups g WHERE u.id = 10 ORDER BY g.name DESC, g.name ASC

Override Field Association Mappings In Subclasses¶

Sometimes there is a need to persist entities but override all or part of the mapping metadata. Sometimes also the mapping to override comes from entities using traits where the traits have mapping metadata. This tutorial explains how to override mapping metadata, i.e. attributes and associations metadata in particular. The example here shows the overriding of a class that uses a trait but is similar when extending a base class as shown at the end of this tutorial.

Suppose we have a class ExampleEntityWithOverride. This class uses trait ExampleTrait:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 *
 * @AttributeOverrides({
 *      @AttributeOverride(name="foo",
 *          column=@Column(
 *              name     = "foo_overridden",
 *              type     = "integer",
 *              length   = 140,
 *              nullable = false,
 *              unique   = false
 *          )
 *      )
 * })
 *
 * @AssociationOverrides({
 *      @AssociationOverride(name="bar",
 *          joinColumns=@JoinColumn(
 *              name="example_entity_overridden_bar_id", referencedColumnName="id"
 *          )
 *      )
 * })
 */
class ExampleEntityWithOverride
{
    use ExampleTrait;
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Bar
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="string") */
    private $id;
}

The docblock is showing metadata override of the attribute and association type. It basically changes the names of the columns mapped for a property foo and for the association bar which relates to Bar class shown above. Here is the trait which has mapping metadata that is overridden by the annotation above:

/**
 * Trait class
 */
trait ExampleTrait
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="string") */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @Column(name="trait_foo", type="integer", length=100, nullable=true, unique=true)
     */
    protected $foo;

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Bar", cascade={"persist", "merge"})
     * @JoinColumn(name="example_trait_bar_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     */
    protected $bar;
}

The case for just extending a class would be just the same but:

class ExampleEntityWithOverride extends BaseEntityWithSomeMapping
{
    // ...
}

Overriding is also supported via XML and YAML.

Pagination¶

New in version 2.2.

Starting with version 2.2 Doctrine ships with a Paginator for DQL queries. It has a very simple API and implements the SPL interfaces Countable and IteratorAggregate.

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Pagination\Paginator;

$dql = "SELECT p, c FROM BlogPost p JOIN p.comments c";
$query = $entityManager->createQuery($dql)
                       ->setFirstResult(0)
                       ->setMaxResults(100);

$paginator = new Paginator($query, $fetchJoinCollection = true);

$c = count($paginator);
foreach ($paginator as $post) {
    echo $post->getHeadline() . "\n";
}

Paginating Doctrine queries is not as simple as you might think in the beginning. If you have complex fetch-join scenarios with one-to-many or many-to-many associations using the “default” LIMIT functionality of database vendors is not sufficient to get the correct results.

By default the pagination extension does the following steps to compute the correct result:

Perform a Count query using DISTINCT keyword.
Perform a Limit Subquery with DISTINCT to find all ids of the entity in from on the current page.
Perform a WHERE IN query to get all results for the current page.

This behavior is only necessary if you actually fetch join a to-many collection. You can disable this behavior by setting the $fetchJoinCollection flag to false; in that case only 2 instead of the 3 queries described are executed. We hope to automate the detection for this in the future.

Reference Guide¶

Architecture¶

This chapter gives an overview of the overall architecture, terminology and constraints of Doctrine 2. It is recommended to read this chapter carefully.

Using an Object-Relational Mapper¶

As the term ORM already hints at, Doctrine 2 aims to simplify the translation between database rows and the PHP object model. The primary use case for Doctrine are therefore applications that utilize the Object-Oriented Programming Paradigm. For applications that not primarily work with objects Doctrine 2 is not suited very well.

Requirements¶

Doctrine 2 requires a minimum of PHP 5.3.0. For greatly improved performance it is also recommended that you use APC with PHP.

Doctrine 2 Packages¶

Doctrine 2 is divided into three main packages.

Common
DBAL (includes Common)
ORM (includes DBAL+Common)

This manual mainly covers the ORM package, sometimes touching parts of the underlying DBAL and Common packages. The Doctrine code base is split in to these packages for a few reasons and they are to...

...make things more maintainable and decoupled
...allow you to use the code in Doctrine Common without the ORM or DBAL
...allow you to use the DBAL without the ORM

The Common Package¶

The Common package contains highly reusable components that have no dependencies beyond the package itself (and PHP, of course). The root namespace of the Common package is Doctrine\Common.

The DBAL Package¶

The DBAL package contains an enhanced database abstraction layer on top of PDO but is not strongly bound to PDO. The purpose of this layer is to provide a single API that bridges most of the differences between the different RDBMS vendors. The root namespace of the DBAL package is Doctrine\DBAL.

The ORM Package¶

The ORM package contains the object-relational mapping toolkit that provides transparent relational persistence for plain PHP objects. The root namespace of the ORM package is Doctrine\ORM.

Terminology¶

Entities¶

An entity is a lightweight, persistent domain object. An entity can be any regular PHP class observing the following restrictions:

An entity class must not be final or contain final methods.
All persistent properties/field of any entity class should always be private or protected, otherwise lazy-loading might not work as expected. In case you serialize entities (for example Session) properties should be protected (See Serialize section below).
An entity class must not implement __clone or do so safely.
An entity class must not implement __wakeup or do so safely. Also consider implementing Serializable instead.
Any two entity classes in a class hierarchy that inherit directly or indirectly from one another must not have a mapped property with the same name. That is, if B inherits from A then B must not have a mapped field with the same name as an already mapped field that is inherited from A.
An entity cannot make use of func_get_args() to implement variable parameters. Generated proxies do not support this for performance reasons and your code might actually fail to work when violating this restriction.

Entities support inheritance, polymorphic associations, and polymorphic queries. Both abstract and concrete classes can be entities. Entities may extend non-entity classes as well as entity classes, and non-entity classes may extend entity classes.

Note

The constructor of an entity is only ever invoked when you construct a new instance with the new keyword. Doctrine never calls entity constructors, thus you are free to use them as you wish and even have it require arguments of any type.

Entity states¶

An entity instance can be characterized as being NEW, MANAGED, DETACHED or REMOVED.

A NEW entity instance has no persistent identity, and is not yet associated with an EntityManager and a UnitOfWork (i.e. those just created with the “new” operator).
A MANAGED entity instance is an instance with a persistent identity that is associated with an EntityManager and whose persistence is thus managed.
A DETACHED entity instance is an instance with a persistent identity that is not (or no longer) associated with an EntityManager and a UnitOfWork.
A REMOVED entity instance is an instance with a persistent identity, associated with an EntityManager, that will be removed from the database upon transaction commit.

Persistent fields¶

The persistent state of an entity is represented by instance variables. An instance variable must be directly accessed only from within the methods of the entity by the entity instance itself. Instance variables must not be accessed by clients of the entity. The state of the entity is available to clients only through the entity’s methods, i.e. accessor methods (getter/setter methods) or other business methods.

Collection-valued persistent fields and properties must be defined in terms of the Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection interface. The collection implementation type may be used by the application to initialize fields or properties before the entity is made persistent. Once the entity becomes managed (or detached), subsequent access must be through the interface type.

Serializing entities¶

Serializing entities can be problematic and is not really recommended, at least not as long as an entity instance still holds references to proxy objects or is still managed by an EntityManager. If you intend to serialize (and unserialize) entity instances that still hold references to proxy objects you may run into problems with private properties because of technical limitations. Proxy objects implement __sleep and it is not possible for __sleep to return names of private properties in parent classes. On the other hand it is not a solution for proxy objects to implement Serializable because Serializable does not work well with any potential cyclic object references (at least we did not find a way yet, if you did, please contact us).

The EntityManager¶

The EntityManager class is a central access point to the ORM functionality provided by Doctrine 2. The EntityManager API is used to manage the persistence of your objects and to query for persistent objects.

Transactional write-behind¶

An EntityManager and the underlying UnitOfWork employ a strategy called “transactional write-behind” that delays the execution of SQL statements in order to execute them in the most efficient way and to execute them at the end of a transaction so that all write locks are quickly released. You should see Doctrine as a tool to synchronize your in-memory objects with the database in well defined units of work. Work with your objects and modify them as usual and when you’re done call EntityManager#flush() to make your changes persistent.

The Unit of Work¶

Internally an EntityManager uses a UnitOfWork, which is a typical implementation of the Unit of Work pattern, to keep track of all the things that need to be done the next time flush is invoked. You usually do not directly interact with a UnitOfWork but with the EntityManager instead.

Installation¶

The installation chapter has moved to Installation and Configuration.

Installation and Configuration¶

Doctrine can be installed with Composer. For older versions we still have PEAR packages.

Define the following requirement in your composer.json file:

{
    "require": {
        "doctrine/orm": "*"
    }
}

Then call composer install from your command line. If you don’t know how Composer works, check out their Getting Started to set up.

Class loading¶

Autoloading is taken care of by Composer. You just have to include the composer autoload file in your project:

<?php
// bootstrap.php
// Include Composer Autoload (relative to project root).
require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

Obtaining an EntityManager¶

Once you have prepared the class loading, you acquire an EntityManager instance. The EntityManager class is the primary access point to ORM functionality provided by Doctrine.

<?php
// bootstrap.php
require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Setup;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;

$paths = array("/path/to/entities-or-mapping-files");
$isDevMode = false;

// the connection configuration
$dbParams = array(
    'driver'   => 'pdo_mysql',
    'user'     => 'root',
    'password' => '',
    'dbname'   => 'foo',
);

$config = Setup::createAnnotationMetadataConfiguration($paths, $isDevMode);
$entityManager = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

Or if you prefer XML:

<?php
$config = Setup::createXMLMetadataConfiguration($paths, $isDevMode);
$entityManager = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

Or if you prefer YAML:

<?php
$config = Setup::createYAMLMetadataConfiguration($paths, $isDevMode);
$entityManager = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

Inside the Setup methods several assumptions are made:

If $devMode is true always use an ArrayCache (in-memory) and regenerate proxies on every request.
If $devMode is false, check for Caches in the order APC, Xcache, Memcache (127.0.0.1:11211), Redis (127.0.0.1:6379) unless $cache is passed as fourth argument.
If $devMode is false, set then proxy classes have to be explicitly created

through the command line.

If third argument $proxyDir is not set, use the systems temporary directory.

If you want to configure Doctrine in more detail, take a look at the Advanced Configuration section.

Note

You can learn more about the database connection configuration in the Doctrine DBAL connection configuration reference.

Setting up the Commandline Tool¶

Doctrine ships with a number of command line tools that are very helpful during development. You can call this command from the Composer binary directory:

$ php vendor/bin/doctrine

You need to register your applications EntityManager to the console tool to make use of the tasks by creating a cli-config.php file with the following content:

On Doctrine 2.4 and above:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\ConsoleRunner;

// replace with file to your own project bootstrap
require_once 'bootstrap.php';

// replace with mechanism to retrieve EntityManager in your app
$entityManager = GetEntityManager();

return ConsoleRunner::createHelperSet($entityManager);

On Doctrine 2.3 and below:

<?php
// cli-config.php
require_once 'my_bootstrap.php';

// Any way to access the EntityManager from  your application
$em = GetMyEntityManager();

$helperSet = new \Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\HelperSet(array(
    'db' => new \Doctrine\DBAL\Tools\Console\Helper\ConnectionHelper($em->getConnection()),
    'em' => new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\Helper\EntityManagerHelper($em)
));

Frequently Asked Questions¶

Note

This FAQ is a work in progress. We will add lots of questions and not answer them right away just to remember what is often asked. If you stumble across an unanswered question please write a mail to the mailing-list or join the #doctrine channel on Freenode IRC.

Database Schema¶

How do I set the charset and collation for MySQL tables?¶

You can’t set these values inside the annotations, yml or xml mapping files. To make a database work with the default charset and collation you should configure MySQL to use it as default charset, or create the database with charset and collation details. This way they get inherited to all newly created database tables and columns.

Entity Classes¶

I access a variable and its null, what is wrong?¶

If this variable is a public variable then you are violating one of the criteria for entities. All properties have to be protected or private for the proxy object pattern to work.

How can I add default values to a column?¶

Doctrine does not support to set the default values in columns through the “DEFAULT” keyword in SQL. This is not necessary however, you can just use your class properties as default values. These are then used upon insert:

class User
{
    const STATUS_DISABLED = 0;
    const STATUS_ENABLED = 1;

    private $algorithm = "sha1";
    private $status = self:STATUS_DISABLED;
}

.

Mapping¶

Why do I get exceptions about unique constraint failures during `$em->flush()`?¶

Doctrine does not check if you are re-adding entities with a primary key that already exists or adding entities to a collection twice. You have to check for both conditions yourself in the code before calling $em->flush() if you know that unique constraint failures can occur.

In Symfony2 for example there is a Unique Entity Validator to achieve this task.

For collections you can check with $collection->contains($entity) if an entity is already part of this collection. For a FETCH=LAZY collection this will initialize the collection, however for FETCH=EXTRA_LAZY this method will use SQL to determine if this entity is already part of the collection.

Associations¶

What is wrong when I get an InvalidArgumentException “A new entity was found through the relationship..”?¶

This exception is thrown during EntityManager#flush() when there exists an object in the identity map that contains a reference to an object that Doctrine does not know about. Say for example you grab a “User”-entity from the database with a specific id and set a completely new object into one of the associations of the User object. If you then call EntityManager#flush() without letting Doctrine know about this new object using EntityManager#persist($newObject) you will see this exception.

You can solve this exception by:

Calling EntityManager#persist($newObject) on the new object
Using cascade=persist on the association that contains the new object

How can I filter an association?¶

Natively you can’t filter associations in 2.0 and 2.1. You should use DQL queries to query for the filtered set of entities.

I call clear() on a One-To-Many collection but the entities are not deleted¶

This is an expected behavior that has to do with the inverse/owning side handling of Doctrine. By definition a One-To-Many association is on the inverse side, that means changes to it will not be recognized by Doctrine.

If you want to perform the equivalent of the clear operation you have to iterate the collection and set the owning side many-to-one reference to NULL as well to detach all entities from the collection. This will trigger the appropriate UPDATE statements on the database.

How can I add columns to a many-to-many table?¶

The many-to-many association is only supporting foreign keys in the table definition To work with many-to-many tables containing extra columns you have to use the foreign keys as primary keys feature of Doctrine introduced in version 2.1.

See the tutorial on composite primary keys for more information.

How can i paginate fetch-joined collections?¶

If you are issuing a DQL statement that fetches a collection as well you cannot easily iterate over this collection using a LIMIT statement (or vendor equivalent).

Doctrine does not offer a solution for this out of the box but there are several extensions that do:

Why does pagination not work correctly with fetch joins?¶

Pagination in Doctrine uses a LIMIT clause (or vendor equivalent) to restrict the results. However when fetch-joining this is not returning the correct number of results since joining with a one-to-many or many-to-many association multiplies the number of rows by the number of associated entities.

See the previous question for a solution to this task.

Inheritance¶

Can I use Inheritance with Doctrine 2?¶

Yes, you can use Single- or Joined-Table Inheritance in Doctrine 2.

See the documentation chapter on inheritance mapping for the details.

Why does Doctrine not create proxy objects for my inheritance hierarchy?¶

If you set a many-to-one or one-to-one association target-entity to any parent class of an inheritance hierarchy Doctrine does not know what PHP class the foreign is actually of. To find this out it has to execute a SQL query to look this information up in the database.

EntityGenerator¶

Why does the EntityGenerator not do X?¶

The EntityGenerator is not a full fledged code-generator that solves all tasks. Code-Generation is not a first-class priority in Doctrine 2 anymore (compared to Doctrine 1). The EntityGenerator is supposed to kick-start you, but not towards 100%.

Why does the EntityGenerator not generate inheritance correctly?¶

Just from the details of the discriminator map the EntityGenerator cannot guess the inheritance hierarchy. This is why the generation of inherited entities does not fully work. You have to adjust some additional code to get this one working correctly.

Performance¶

Why is an extra SQL query executed every time I fetch an entity with a one-to-one relation?¶

If Doctrine detects that you are fetching an inverse side one-to-one association it has to execute an additional query to load this object, because it cannot know if there is no such object (setting null) or if it should set a proxy and which id this proxy has.

To solve this problem currently a query has to be executed to find out this information.

Doctrine Query Language¶

What is DQL?¶

DQL stands for Doctrine Query Language, a query language that very much looks like SQL but has some important benefits when using Doctrine:

It uses class names and fields instead of tables and columns, separating concerns between backend and your object model.
It utilizes the metadata defined to offer a range of shortcuts when writing. For example you do not have to specify the ON clause of joins, since Doctrine already knows about them.
It adds some functionality that is related to object management and transforms them into SQL.

It also has some drawbacks of course:

The syntax is slightly different to SQL so you have to learn and remember the differences.
To be vendor independent it can only implement a subset of all the existing SQL dialects. Vendor specific functionality and optimizations cannot be used through DQL unless implemented by you explicitly.
For some DQL constructs subselects are used which are known to be slow in MySQL.

Can I sort by a function (for example ORDER BY RAND()) in DQL?¶

No, it is not supported to sort by function in DQL. If you need this functionality you should either use a native-query or come up with another solution. As a side note: Sorting with ORDER BY RAND() is painfully slow starting with 1000 rows.

A Query fails, how can I debug it?¶

First, if you are using the QueryBuilder you can use $queryBuilder->getDQL() to get the DQL string of this query. The corresponding SQL you can get from the Query instance by calling $query->getSQL().

<?php
$dql = "SELECT u FROM User u";
$query = $entityManager->createQuery($dql);
var_dump($query->getSQL());

$qb = $entityManager->createQueryBuilder();
$qb->select('u')->from('User', 'u');
var_dump($qb->getDQL());

Basic Mapping¶

This chapter explains the basic mapping of objects and properties. Mapping of associations will be covered in the next chapter “Association Mapping”.

Mapping Drivers¶

Doctrine provides several different ways for specifying object-relational mapping metadata:

Docblock Annotations
XML
YAML

This manual usually mentions docblock annotations in all the examples that are spread throughout all chapters, however for many examples alternative YAML and XML examples are given as well. There are dedicated reference chapters for XML and YAML mapping, respectively that explain them in more detail. There is also an Annotation reference chapter.

Note

If you’re wondering which mapping driver gives the best performance, the answer is: They all give exactly the same performance. Once the metadata of a class has been read from the source (annotations, xml or yaml) it is stored in an instance of the Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata class and these instances are stored in the metadata cache. Therefore at the end of the day all drivers perform equally well. If you’re not using a metadata cache (not recommended!) then the XML driver might have a slight edge in performance due to the powerful native XML support in PHP.

Introduction to Docblock Annotations¶

You’ve probably used docblock annotations in some form already, most likely to provide documentation metadata for a tool like PHPDocumentor (@author, @link, ...). Docblock annotations are a tool to embed metadata inside the documentation section which can then be processed by some tool. Doctrine 2 generalizes the concept of docblock annotations so that they can be used for any kind of metadata and so that it is easy to define new docblock annotations. In order to allow more involved annotation values and to reduce the chances of clashes with other docblock annotations, the Doctrine 2 docblock annotations feature an alternative syntax that is heavily inspired by the Annotation syntax introduced in Java 5.

The implementation of these enhanced docblock annotations is located in the Doctrine\Common\Annotations namespace and therefore part of the Common package. Doctrine 2 docblock annotations support namespaces and nested annotations among other things. The Doctrine 2 ORM defines its own set of docblock annotations for supplying object-relational mapping metadata.

Note

If you’re not comfortable with the concept of docblock annotations, don’t worry, as mentioned earlier Doctrine 2 provides XML and YAML alternatives and you could easily implement your own favourite mechanism for defining ORM metadata.

Persistent classes¶

In order to mark a class for object-relational persistence it needs to be designated as an entity. This can be done through the @Entity marker annotation.

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity */
class MyPersistentClass
{
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass">
      <!-- ... -->
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  # ...

By default, the entity will be persisted to a table with the same name as the class name. In order to change that, you can use the @Table annotation as follows:

PHP

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="my_persistent_class")
 */
class MyPersistentClass
{
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass" table="my_persistent_class">
      <!-- ... -->
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  table: my_persistent_class
  # ...

Now instances of MyPersistentClass will be persisted into a table named my_persistent_class.

Doctrine Mapping Types¶

A Doctrine Mapping Type defines the mapping between a PHP type and a SQL type. All Doctrine Mapping Types that ship with Doctrine are fully portable between different RDBMS. You can even write your own custom mapping types that might or might not be portable, which is explained later in this chapter.

For example, the Doctrine Mapping Type string defines the mapping from a PHP string to a SQL VARCHAR (or VARCHAR2 etc. depending on the RDBMS brand). Here is a quick overview of the built-in mapping types:

string: Type that maps a SQL VARCHAR to a PHP string.
integer: Type that maps a SQL INT to a PHP integer.
smallint: Type that maps a database SMALLINT to a PHP integer.
bigint: Type that maps a database BIGINT to a PHP string.
boolean: Type that maps a SQL boolean to a PHP boolean.
decimal: Type that maps a SQL DECIMAL to a PHP string.
date: Type that maps a SQL DATETIME to a PHP DateTime object.
time: Type that maps a SQL TIME to a PHP DateTime object.
datetime: Type that maps a SQL DATETIME/TIMESTAMP to a PHP DateTime object.
datetimetz: Type that maps a SQL DATETIME/TIMESTAMP to a PHP DateTime object with timezone.
text: Type that maps a SQL CLOB to a PHP string.
object: Type that maps a SQL CLOB to a PHP object using serialize() and unserialize()
array: Type that maps a SQL CLOB to a PHP array using serialize() and unserialize()
simple_array: Type that maps a SQL CLOB to a PHP array using implode() and explode(), with a comma as delimiter. IMPORTANT Only use this type if you are sure that your values cannot contain a ”,”.
json_array: Type that maps a SQL CLOB to a PHP array using json_encode() and json_decode()
float: Type that maps a SQL Float (Double Precision) to a PHP double. IMPORTANT: Works only with locale settings that use decimal points as separator.
guid: Type that maps a database GUID/UUID to a PHP string. Defaults to varchar but uses a specific type if the platform supports it.
blob: Type that maps a SQL BLOB to a PHP resource stream

Note

Doctrine Mapping Types are NOT SQL types and NOT PHP types! They are mapping types between 2 types. Additionally Mapping types are case-sensitive. For example, using a DateTime column will NOT match the datetime type that ships with Doctrine 2.

Note

DateTime and Object types are compared by reference, not by value. Doctrine updates this values if the reference changes and therefore behaves as if these objects are immutable value objects.

Warning

All Date types assume that you are exclusively using the default timezone set by date_default_timezone_set() or by the php.ini configuration date.timezone. Working with different timezones will cause troubles and unexpected behavior.

If you need specific timezone handling you have to handle this in your domain, converting all the values back and forth from UTC. There is also a cookbook entry on working with datetimes that gives hints for implementing multi timezone applications.

Property Mapping¶

After a class has been marked as an entity it can specify mappings for its instance fields. Here we will only look at simple fields that hold scalar values like strings, numbers, etc. Associations to other objects are covered in the chapter “Association Mapping”.

To mark a property for relational persistence the @Column docblock annotation is used. This annotation usually requires at least 1 attribute to be set, the type. The type attribute specifies the Doctrine Mapping Type to use for the field. If the type is not specified, ‘string’ is used as the default mapping type since it is the most flexible.

Example:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity */
class MyPersistentClass
{
    /** @Column(type="integer") */
    private $id;
    /** @Column(length=50) */
    private $name; // type defaults to string
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass">
    <field name="id" type="integer" />
    <field name="name" length="50" />
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  fields:
    id:
      type: integer
    name:
      length: 50

In that example we mapped the field id to the column id using the mapping type integer and the field name is mapped to the column name with the default mapping type string. As you can see, by default the column names are assumed to be the same as the field names. To specify a different name for the column, you can use the name attribute of the Column annotation as follows:

PHP

<?php
/** @Column(name="db_name") */
private $name;

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass">
    <field name="name" column="db_name" />
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  fields:
    name:
      length: 50
      column: db_name

The Column annotation has some more attributes. Here is a complete list:

type: (optional, defaults to ‘string’) The mapping type to use for the column.
column: (optional, defaults to field name) The name of the column in the database.
length: (optional, default 255) The length of the column in the database. (Applies only if a string-valued column is used).
unique: (optional, default FALSE) Whether the column is a unique key.
nullable: (optional, default FALSE) Whether the database column is nullable.
precision: (optional, default 0) The precision for a decimal (exact numeric) column. (Applies only if a decimal column is used.)
scale: (optional, default 0) The scale for a decimal (exact numeric) column. (Applies only if a decimal column is used.)

Custom Mapping Types¶

Doctrine allows you to create new mapping types. This can come in handy when you’re missing a specific mapping type or when you want to replace the existing implementation of a mapping type.

In order to create a new mapping type you need to subclass Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type and implement/override the methods as you wish. Here is an example skeleton of such a custom type class:

<?php
namespace My\Project\Types;

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform;

/**
 * My custom datatype.
 */
class MyType extends Type
{
    const MYTYPE = 'mytype'; // modify to match your type name

    public function getSqlDeclaration(array $fieldDeclaration, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        // return the SQL used to create your column type. To create a portable column type, use the $platform.
    }

    public function convertToPHPValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        // This is executed when the value is read from the database. Make your conversions here, optionally using the $platform.
    }

    public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        // This is executed when the value is written to the database. Make your conversions here, optionally using the $platform.
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return self::MYTYPE; // modify to match your constant name
    }
}

Restrictions to keep in mind:

If the value of the field is NULL the method convertToDatabaseValue() is not called.
The UnitOfWork never passes values to the database convert method that did not change in the request.

When you have implemented the type you still need to let Doctrine know about it. This can be achieved through the Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type#addType($name, $className) method. See the following example:

<?php
// in bootstrapping code

// ...

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;

// ...

// Register my type
Type::addType('mytype', 'My\Project\Types\MyType');

As can be seen above, when registering the custom types in the configuration you specify a unique name for the mapping type and map that to the corresponding fully qualified class name. Now you can use your new type in your mapping like this:

<?php
class MyPersistentClass
{
    /** @Column(type="mytype") */
    private $field;
}

To have Schema-Tool convert the underlying database type of your new “mytype” directly into an instance of MyType you have to additionally register this mapping with your database platform:

<?php
$conn = $em->getConnection();
$conn->getDatabasePlatform()->registerDoctrineTypeMapping('db_mytype', 'mytype');

Now using Schema-Tool, whenever it detects a column having the db_mytype it will convert it into a mytype Doctrine Type instance for Schema representation. Keep in mind that you can easily produce clashes this way, each database type can only map to exactly one Doctrine mapping type.

Custom ColumnDefinition¶

You can define a custom definition for each column using the “columnDefinition” attribute of @Column. You have to define all the definitions that follow the name of a column here.

Note

Using columnDefinition will break change-detection in SchemaTool.

Identifiers / Primary Keys¶

Every entity class needs an identifier/primary key. You designate the field that serves as the identifier with the @Id marker annotation. Here is an example:

PHP

<?php
class MyPersistentClass
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") */
    private $id;
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass">
    <id name="id" type="integer" />
    <field name="name" length="50" />
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
  fields:
    name:
      length: 50

Without doing anything else, the identifier is assumed to be manually assigned. That means your code would need to properly set the identifier property before passing a new entity to EntityManager#persist($entity).

A common alternative strategy is to use a generated value as the identifier. To do this, you use the @GeneratedValue annotation like this:

PHP

<?php
class MyPersistentClass
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer")
     * @GeneratedValue
     */
    private $id;
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="MyPersistentClass">
    <id name="id" type="integer">
        <generator strategy="AUTO" />
    </id>
    <field name="name" length="50" />
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      length: 50

This tells Doctrine to automatically generate a value for the identifier. How this value is generated is specified by the strategy attribute, which is optional and defaults to ‘AUTO’. A value of AUTO tells Doctrine to use the generation strategy that is preferred by the currently used database platform. See below for details.

Identifier Generation Strategies¶

The previous example showed how to use the default identifier generation strategy without knowing the underlying database with the AUTO-detection strategy. It is also possible to specify the identifier generation strategy more explicitly, which allows to make use of some additional features.

Here is the list of possible generation strategies:

AUTO (default): Tells Doctrine to pick the strategy that is preferred by the used database platform. The preferred strategies are IDENTITY for MySQL, SQLite and MsSQL and SEQUENCE for Oracle and PostgreSQL. This strategy provides full portability.
SEQUENCE: Tells Doctrine to use a database sequence for ID generation. This strategy does currently not provide full portability. Sequences are supported by Oracle and PostgreSql.
IDENTITY: Tells Doctrine to use special identity columns in the database that generate a value on insertion of a row. This strategy does currently not provide full portability and is supported by the following platforms: MySQL/SQLite (AUTO_INCREMENT), MSSQL (IDENTITY) and PostgreSQL (SERIAL).
TABLE: Tells Doctrine to use a separate table for ID generation. This strategy provides full portability. *This strategy is not yet implemented!*
NONE: Tells Doctrine that the identifiers are assigned (and thus generated) by your code. The assignment must take place before a new entity is passed to EntityManager#persist. NONE is the same as leaving off the @GeneratedValue entirely.

Sequence Generator¶

The Sequence Generator can currently be used in conjunction with Oracle or Postgres and allows some additional configuration options besides specifying the sequence’s name:

PHP

<?php
class User
{
    /**
     * @Id
     * @GeneratedValue(strategy="SEQUENCE")
     * @SequenceGenerator(sequenceName="tablename_seq", initialValue=1, allocationSize=100)
     */
    protected $id = null;
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
  <entity name="User">
    <id name="id" type="integer">
        <generator strategy="SEQUENCE" />
        <sequence-generator sequence-name="tablename_seq" allocation-size="100" initial-value="1" />
    </id>
  </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyPersistentClass:
  type: entity
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: SEQUENCE
      sequenceGenerator:
        sequenceName: tablename_seq
        allocationSize: 100
        initialValue: 1

The initial value specifies at which value the sequence should start.

The allocationSize is a powerful feature to optimize INSERT performance of Doctrine. The allocationSize specifies by how much values the sequence is incremented whenever the next value is retrieved. If this is larger than 1 (one) Doctrine can generate identifier values for the allocationSizes amount of entities. In the above example with allocationSize=100 Doctrine 2 would only need to access the sequence once to generate the identifiers for 100 new entities.

The default allocationSize for a @SequenceGenerator is currently 10.

Caution

The allocationSize is detected by SchemaTool and transformed into an “INCREMENT BY ” clause in the CREATE SEQUENCE statement. For a database schema created manually (and not SchemaTool) you have to make sure that the allocationSize configuration option is never larger than the actual sequences INCREMENT BY value, otherwise you may get duplicate keys.

Note

It is possible to use strategy=”AUTO” and at the same time specifying a @SequenceGenerator. In such a case, your custom sequence settings are used in the case where the preferred strategy of the underlying platform is SEQUENCE, such as for Oracle and PostgreSQL.

Composite Keys¶

Doctrine 2 allows to use composite primary keys. There are however some restrictions opposed to using a single identifier. The use of the @GeneratedValue annotation is only supported for simple (not composite) primary keys, which means you can only use composite keys if you generate the primary key values yourself before calling EntityManager#persist() on the entity.

To designate a composite primary key / identifier, simply put the @Id marker annotation on all fields that make up the primary key.

Quoting Reserved Words¶

It may sometimes be necessary to quote a column or table name because it conflicts with a reserved word of the particular RDBMS in use. This is often referred to as “Identifier Quoting”. To let Doctrine know that you would like a table or column name to be quoted in all SQL statements, enclose the table or column name in backticks. Here is an example:

<?php
/** @Column(name="`number`", type="integer") */
private $number;

Doctrine will then quote this column name in all SQL statements according to the used database platform.

Warning

Identifier Quoting is not supported for join column names or discriminator column names.

Warning

Identifier Quoting is a feature that is mainly intended to support legacy database schemas. The use of reserved words and identifier quoting is generally discouraged. Identifier quoting should not be used to enable the use non-standard-characters such as a dash in a hypothetical column test-name. Also Schema-Tool will likely have troubles when quoting is used for case-sensitivity reasons (in Oracle for example).

Association Mapping¶

This chapter introduces association mappings which are used to explain references between objects and are mapped to a relational database using foreign keys.

Instead of working with the foreign keys directly you will always work with references to objects:

A reference to a single object is represented by a foreign key.
A collection of objects is represented by many foreign keys pointing to the object holding the collection

This chapter is split into three different sections.

A list of all the possible association mapping use-cases is given.
Mapping Defaults are explained that simplify the use-case examples.
Collections are introduced that contain entities in associations.

To master associations you should also learn about owning and inverse sides of associations

One-To-One, Unidirectional¶

A unidirectional one-to-one association is very common. Here is an example of a Product that has one Shipping object associated to it. The Shipping side does not reference back to the Product so it is unidirectional.

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class Product
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Shipping")
     * @JoinColumn(name="shipping_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $shipping;

    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class Shipping
{
    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity class="Product">
        <one-to-one field="shipping" target-entity="Shipping">
            <join-column name="shipping_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
        </one-to-one>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Product:
  type: entity
  oneToOne:
    shipping:
      targetEntity: Shipping
      joinColumn:
        name: shipping_id
        referencedColumnName: id

Note that the @JoinColumn is not really necessary in this example, as the defaults would be the same.

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE Product (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    shipping_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    UNIQUE INDEX UNIQ_6FBC94267FE4B2B (shipping_id),
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE Shipping (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Product ADD FOREIGN KEY (shipping_id) REFERENCES Shipping(id);

One-To-One, Bidirectional¶

Here is a one-to-one relationship between a Customer and a Cart. The Cart has a reference back to the Customer so it is bidirectional.

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class Customer
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Cart", mappedBy="customer")
     **/
    private $cart;

    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class Cart
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Customer", inversedBy="cart")
     * @JoinColumn(name="customer_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $customer;

    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="Customer">
        <one-to-one field="cart" target-entity="Cart" mapped-by="customer" />
    </entity>
    <entity name="Cart">
        <one-to-one field="customer" target-entity="Customer" inversed-by="cart">
            <join-column name="customer_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
        </one-to-one>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Customer:
  oneToOne:
    cart:
      targetEntity: Cart
      mappedBy: customer
Cart:
  oneToOne:
    customer:
      targetEntity: Customer
      inversedBy: cart
      joinColumn:
        name: customer_id
        referencedColumnName: id

Note that the @JoinColumn is not really necessary in this example, as the defaults would be the same.

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE Cart (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    customer_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE Customer (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Cart ADD FOREIGN KEY (customer_id) REFERENCES Customer(id);

See how the foreign key is defined on the owning side of the relation, the table Cart.

One-To-One, Self-referencing¶

You can easily have self referencing one-to-one relationships like below.

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class Student
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Student")
     * @JoinColumn(name="mentor_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $mentor;

    // ...
}

Note that the @JoinColumn is not really necessary in this example, as the defaults would be the same.

With the generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE Student (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    mentor_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Student ADD FOREIGN KEY (mentor_id) REFERENCES Student(id);

One-To-Many, Unidirectional with Join Table¶

A unidirectional one-to-many association can be mapped through a join table. From Doctrine’s point of view, it is simply mapped as a unidirectional many-to-many whereby a unique constraint on one of the join columns enforces the one-to-many cardinality.

Note

One-To-Many uni-directional relations with join-table only work using the @ManyToMany annotation and a unique-constraint.

The following example sets up such a unidirectional one-to-many association:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber")
     * @JoinTable(name="users_phonenumbers",
     *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="phonenumber_id", referencedColumnName="id", unique=true)}
     *      )
     **/
    private $phonenumbers;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->phonenumbers = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }

    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class Phonenumber
{
    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="User">
        <many-to-many field="phonenumbers" target-entity="Phonenumber">
            <join-table name="users_phonenumbers">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column name="phonenumber_id" referenced-column-name="id" unique="true" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    phonenumbers:
      targetEntity: Phonenumber
      joinTable:
        name: users_phonenumbers
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          phonenumber_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
            unique: true

Generates the following MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE User (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE users_phonenumbers (
    user_id INT NOT NULL,
    phonenumber_id INT NOT NULL,
    UNIQUE INDEX users_phonenumbers_phonenumber_id_uniq (phonenumber_id),
    PRIMARY KEY(user_id, phonenumber_id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE Phonenumber (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

ALTER TABLE users_phonenumbers ADD FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES User(id);
ALTER TABLE users_phonenumbers ADD FOREIGN KEY (phonenumber_id) REFERENCES Phonenumber(id);

Many-To-One, Unidirectional¶

You can easily implement a many-to-one unidirectional association with the following:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Address")
     * @JoinColumn(name="address_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $address;
}

/** @Entity **/
class Address
{
    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="User">
        <many-to-one field="address" target-entity="Address">
            <join-column name="address_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
        </many-to-one>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToOne:
    address:
      targetEntity: Address
      joinColumn:
        name: address_id
        referencedColumnName: id

Note

The above @JoinColumn is optional as it would default to address_id and id anyways. You can omit it and let it use the defaults.

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE User (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    address_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE Address (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

ALTER TABLE User ADD FOREIGN KEY (address_id) REFERENCES Address(id);

One-To-Many, Bidirectional¶

Bidirectional one-to-many associations are very common. The following code shows an example with a Product and a Feature class:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class Product
{
    // ...
    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Feature", mappedBy="product")
     **/
    private $features;
    // ...

    public function __construct() {
        $this->features = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }
}

/** @Entity **/
class Feature
{
    // ...
    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Product", inversedBy="features")
     * @JoinColumn(name="product_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $product;
    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="Product">
        <one-to-many field="features" target-entity="Feature" mapped-by="product" />
    </entity>
    <entity name="Feature">
        <many-to-one field="product" target-entity="Product" inversed-by="features">
            <join-column name="product_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
        </many-to-one>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Product:
  type: entity
  oneToMany:
    features:
      targetEntity: Feature
      mappedBy: product
Feature:
  type: entity
  manyToOne:
    product:
      targetEntity: Product
      inversedBy: features
      joinColumn:
        name: product_id
        referencedColumnName: id

Note that the @JoinColumn is not really necessary in this example, as the defaults would be the same.

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE Product (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE Feature (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    product_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Feature ADD FOREIGN KEY (product_id) REFERENCES Product(id);

One-To-Many, Self-referencing¶

You can also setup a one-to-many association that is self-referencing. In this example we setup a hierarchy of Category objects by creating a self referencing relationship. This effectively models a hierarchy of categories and from the database perspective is known as an adjacency list approach.

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class Category
{
    // ...
    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Category", mappedBy="parent")
     **/
    private $children;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Category", inversedBy="children")
     * @JoinColumn(name="parent_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $parent;
    // ...

    public function __construct() {
        $this->children = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="Category">
        <one-to-many field="children" target-entity="Category" mapped-by="parent" />
        <many-to-one field="parent" target-entity="Category" inversed-by="children" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Category:
  type: entity
  oneToMany:
    children:
      targetEntity: Category
      mappedBy: parent
  manyToOne:
    parent:
      targetEntity: Category
      inversedBy: children

Note that the @JoinColumn is not really necessary in this example, as the defaults would be the same.

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE Category (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    parent_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Category ADD FOREIGN KEY (parent_id) REFERENCES Category(id);

Many-To-Many, Unidirectional¶

Real many-to-many associations are less common. The following example shows a unidirectional association between User and Group entities:

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group")
     * @JoinTable(name="users_groups",
     *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="group_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     *      )
     **/
    private $groups;

    // ...

    public function __construct() {
        $this->groups = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }
}

/** @Entity **/
class Group
{
    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="User">
        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
            <join-table name="users_groups">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column name="group_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group
      joinTable:
        name: users_groups
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE User (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE users_groups (
    user_id INT NOT NULL,
    group_id INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(user_id, group_id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE Group (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE users_groups ADD FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES User(id);
ALTER TABLE users_groups ADD FOREIGN KEY (group_id) REFERENCES Group(id);

Note

Why are many-to-many associations less common? Because frequently you want to associate additional attributes with an association, in which case you introduce an association class. Consequently, the direct many-to-many association disappears and is replaced by one-to-many/many-to-one associations between the 3 participating classes.

Many-To-Many, Bidirectional¶

Here is a similar many-to-many relationship as above except this one is bidirectional.

PHP

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group", inversedBy="users")
     * @JoinTable(name="users_groups")
     **/
    private $groups;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->groups = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }

    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class Group
{
    // ...
    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="groups")
     **/
    private $users;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->users = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }

    // ...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="User">
        <many-to-many field="groups" inversed-by="users" target-entity="Group">
            <join-table name="users_groups">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column name="group_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>
    </entity>

    <entity name="Group">
        <many-to-many field="users" mapped-by="groups" target-entity="User"/>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group
      inversedBy: users
      joinTable:
        name: users_groups
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id

Group:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    users:
      targetEntity: User
      mappedBy: groups

The MySQL schema is exactly the same as for the Many-To-Many uni-directional case above.

Picking Owning and Inverse Side¶

For Many-To-Many associations you can chose which entity is the owning and which the inverse side. There is a very simple semantic rule to decide which side is more suitable to be the owning side from a developers perspective. You only have to ask yourself, which entity is responsible for the connection management and pick that as the owning side.

Take an example of two entities Article and Tag. Whenever you want to connect an Article to a Tag and vice-versa, it is mostly the Article that is responsible for this relation. Whenever you add a new article, you want to connect it with existing or new tags. Your create Article form will probably support this notion and allow to specify the tags directly. This is why you should pick the Article as owning side, as it makes the code more understandable:

<?php
class Article
{
    private $tags;

    public function addTag(Tag $tag)
    {
        $tag->addArticle($this); // synchronously updating inverse side
        $this->tags[] = $tag;
    }
}

class Tag
{
    private $articles;

    public function addArticle(Article $article)
    {
        $this->articles[] = $article;
    }
}

This allows to group the tag adding on the Article side of the association:

<?php
$article = new Article();
$article->addTag($tagA);
$article->addTag($tagB);

Many-To-Many, Self-referencing¶

You can even have a self-referencing many-to-many association. A common scenario is where a User has friends and the target entity of that relationship is a User so it is self referencing. In this example it is bidirectional so User has a field named $friendsWithMe and $myFriends.

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="myFriends")
     **/
    private $friendsWithMe;

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="friendsWithMe")
     * @JoinTable(name="friends",
     *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="friend_user_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     *      )
     **/
    private $myFriends;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->friendsWithMe = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
        $this->myFriends = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }

    // ...
}

Generated MySQL Schema:

CREATE TABLE User (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE friends (
    user_id INT NOT NULL,
    friend_user_id INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(user_id, friend_user_id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE friends ADD FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES User(id);
ALTER TABLE friends ADD FOREIGN KEY (friend_user_id) REFERENCES User(id);

Mapping Defaults¶

Before we introduce all the association mappings in detail, you should note that the @JoinColumn and @JoinTable definitions are usually optional and have sensible default values. The defaults for a join column in a one-to-one/many-to-one association is as follows:

name: "<fieldname>_id"
referencedColumnName: "id"

As an example, consider this mapping:

PHP

<?php
/** @OneToOne(targetEntity="Shipping") **/
private $shipping;

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity class="Product">
        <one-to-one field="shipping" target-entity="Shipping" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Product:
  type: entity
  oneToOne:
    shipping:
      targetEntity: Shipping

This is essentially the same as the following, more verbose, mapping:

PHP

<?php
/**
 * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Shipping")
 * @JoinColumn(name="shipping_id", referencedColumnName="id")
 **/
private $shipping;

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity class="Product">
        <one-to-one field="shipping" target-entity="Shipping">
            <join-column name="shipping_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
        </one-to-one>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

Product:
  type: entity
  oneToOne:
    shipping:
      targetEntity: Shipping
      joinColumn:
        name: shipping_id
        referencedColumnName: id

The @JoinTable definition used for many-to-many mappings has similar defaults. As an example, consider this mapping:

PHP

<?php
class User
{
    //...
    /** @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group") **/
    private $groups;
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity class="User">
        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group" />
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group

This is essentially the same as the following, more verbose, mapping:

PHP

<?php
class User
{
    //...
    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group")
     * @JoinTable(name="User_Group",
     *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="User_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="Group_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     *      )
     **/
    private $groups;
    //...
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity class="User">
        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
            <join-table name="User_Group">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column id="User_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column id="Group_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

User:
  type: entity
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group
      joinTable:
        name: User_Group
        joinColumns:
          User_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          Group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id

In that case, the name of the join table defaults to a combination of the simple, unqualified class names of the participating classes, separated by an underscore character. The names of the join columns default to the simple, unqualified class name of the targeted class followed by “_id”. The referencedColumnName always defaults to “id”, just as in one-to-one or many-to-one mappings.

If you accept these defaults, you can reduce the mapping code to a minimum.

Collections¶

In all the examples of many-valued associations in this manual we will make use of a Collection interface and a corresponding default implementation ArrayCollection that are defined in the Doctrine\Common\Collections namespace. Why do we need that? Doesn’t that couple my domain model to Doctrine? Unfortunately, PHP arrays, while being great for many things, do not make up for good collections of business objects, especially not in the context of an ORM. The reason is that plain PHP arrays can not be transparently extended / instrumented in PHP code, which is necessary for a lot of advanced ORM features. The classes / interfaces that come closest to an OO collection are ArrayAccess and ArrayObject but until instances of these types can be used in all places where a plain array can be used (something that may happen in PHP6) their usability is fairly limited. You “can” type-hint on ArrayAccess instead of Collection, since the Collection interface extends ArrayAccess, but this will severely limit you in the way you can work with the collection, because the ArrayAccess API is (intentionally) very primitive and more importantly because you can not pass this collection to all the useful PHP array functions, which makes it very hard to work with.

Warning

The Collection interface and ArrayCollection class, like everything else in the Doctrine namespace, are neither part of the ORM, nor the DBAL, it is a plain PHP class that has no outside dependencies apart from dependencies on PHP itself (and the SPL). Therefore using this class in your domain classes and elsewhere does not introduce a coupling to the persistence layer. The Collection class, like everything else in the Common namespace, is not part of the persistence layer. You could even copy that class over to your project if you want to remove Doctrine from your project and all your domain classes will work the same as before.

Initializing Collections¶

You have to be careful when using entity fields that contain a collection of related entities. Say we have a User entity that contains a collection of groups:

<?php
/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    /** @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group") **/
    private $groups;

    public function getGroups()
    {
        return $this->groups;
    }
}

With this code alone the $groups field only contains an instance of Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection if the user is retrieved from Doctrine, however not after you instantiated a fresh instance of the User. When your user entity is still new $groups will obviously be null.

This is why we recommend to initialize all collection fields to an empty ArrayCollection in your entities constructor:

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/** @Entity **/
class User
{
    /** @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group") **/
    private $groups;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->groups = new ArrayCollection();
    }

    public function getGroups()
    {
        return $this->groups;
    }
}

Now the following code will work even if the Entity hasn’t been associated with an EntityManager yet:

<?php
$group = $entityManager->find('Group', $groupId);
$user = new User();
$user->getGroups()->add($group);

Inheritance Mapping¶

Mapped Superclasses¶

A mapped superclass is an abstract or concrete class that provides persistent entity state and mapping information for its subclasses, but which is not itself an entity. Typically, the purpose of such a mapped superclass is to define state and mapping information that is common to multiple entity classes.

Mapped superclasses, just as regular, non-mapped classes, can appear in the middle of an otherwise mapped inheritance hierarchy (through Single Table Inheritance or Class Table Inheritance).

Note

A mapped superclass cannot be an entity, it is not query-able and persistent relationships defined by a mapped superclass must be unidirectional (with an owning side only). This means that One-To-Many associations are not possible on a mapped superclass at all. Furthermore Many-To-Many associations are only possible if the mapped superclass is only used in exactly one entity at the moment. For further support of inheritance, the single or joined table inheritance features have to be used.

Example:

<?php
/** @MappedSuperclass */
class MappedSuperclassBase
{
    /** @Column(type="integer") */
    protected $mapped1;
    /** @Column(type="string") */
    protected $mapped2;
    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="MappedSuperclassRelated1")
     * @JoinColumn(name="related1_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     */
    protected $mappedRelated1;

    // ... more fields and methods
}

/** @Entity */
class EntitySubClass extends MappedSuperclassBase
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") */
    private $id;
    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $name;

    // ... more fields and methods
}

The DDL for the corresponding database schema would look something like this (this is for SQLite):

CREATE TABLE EntitySubClass (mapped1 INTEGER NOT NULL, mapped2 TEXT NOT NULL, id INTEGER NOT NULL, name TEXT NOT NULL, related1_id INTEGER DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id))

As you can see from this DDL snippet, there is only a single table for the entity subclass. All the mappings from the mapped superclass were inherited to the subclass as if they had been defined on that class directly.

Single Table Inheritance¶

Single Table Inheritance is an inheritance mapping strategy where all classes of a hierarchy are mapped to a single database table. In order to distinguish which row represents which type in the hierarchy a so-called discriminator column is used.

Example:

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("SINGLE_TABLE")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Employee extends Person
{
    // ...
}

Things to note:

The @InheritanceType, @DiscriminatorColumn and @DiscriminatorMap must be specified on the topmost class that is part of the mapped entity hierarchy.
The @DiscriminatorMap specifies which values of the discriminator column identify a row as being of a certain type. In the case above a value of “person” identifies a row as being of type Person and “employee” identifies a row as being of type Employee.
The names of the classes in the discriminator map do not need to be fully qualified if the classes are contained in the same namespace as the entity class on which the discriminator map is applied.

Design-time considerations¶

This mapping approach works well when the type hierarchy is fairly simple and stable. Adding a new type to the hierarchy and adding fields to existing supertypes simply involves adding new columns to the table, though in large deployments this may have an adverse impact on the index and column layout inside the database.

Performance impact¶

This strategy is very efficient for querying across all types in the hierarchy or for specific types. No table joins are required, only a WHERE clause listing the type identifiers. In particular, relationships involving types that employ this mapping strategy are very performant.

There is a general performance consideration with Single Table Inheritance: If the target-entity of a many-to-one or one-to-one association is an STI entity, it is preferable for performance reasons that it be a leaf entity in the inheritance hierarchy, (ie. have no subclasses). Otherwise Doctrine CANNOT create proxy instances of this entity and will ALWAYS load the entity eagerly.

SQL Schema considerations¶

For Single-Table-Inheritance to work in scenarios where you are using either a legacy database schema or a self-written database schema you have to make sure that all columns that are not in the root entity but in any of the different sub-entities has to allows null values. Columns that have NOT NULL constraints have to be on the root entity of the single-table inheritance hierarchy.

Class Table Inheritance¶

Class Table Inheritance is an inheritance mapping strategy where each class in a hierarchy is mapped to several tables: its own table and the tables of all parent classes. The table of a child class is linked to the table of a parent class through a foreign key constraint. Doctrine 2 implements this strategy through the use of a discriminator column in the topmost table of the hierarchy because this is the easiest way to achieve polymorphic queries with Class Table Inheritance.

Example:

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

/** @Entity */
class Employee extends Person
{
    // ...
}

Things to note:

The @InheritanceType, @DiscriminatorColumn and @DiscriminatorMap must be specified on the topmost class that is part of the mapped entity hierarchy.
The @DiscriminatorMap specifies which values of the discriminator column identify a row as being of which type. In the case above a value of “person” identifies a row as being of type Person and “employee” identifies a row as being of type Employee.
The names of the classes in the discriminator map do not need to be fully qualified if the classes are contained in the same namespace as the entity class on which the discriminator map is applied.

Note

When you do not use the SchemaTool to generate the required SQL you should know that deleting a class table inheritance makes use of the foreign key property ON DELETE CASCADE in all database implementations. A failure to implement this yourself will lead to dead rows in the database.

Design-time considerations¶

Introducing a new type to the hierarchy, at any level, simply involves interjecting a new table into the schema. Subtypes of that type will automatically join with that new type at runtime. Similarly, modifying any entity type in the hierarchy by adding, modifying or removing fields affects only the immediate table mapped to that type. This mapping strategy provides the greatest flexibility at design time, since changes to any type are always limited to that type’s dedicated table.

Performance impact¶

This strategy inherently requires multiple JOIN operations to perform just about any query which can have a negative impact on performance, especially with large tables and/or large hierarchies. When partial objects are allowed, either globally or on the specific query, then querying for any type will not cause the tables of subtypes to be OUTER JOINed which can increase performance but the resulting partial objects will not fully load themselves on access of any subtype fields, so accessing fields of subtypes after such a query is not safe.

There is a general performance consideration with Class Table Inheritance: If the target-entity of a many-to-one or one-to-one association is a CTI entity, it is preferable for performance reasons that it be a leaf entity in the inheritance hierarchy, (ie. have no subclasses). Otherwise Doctrine CANNOT create proxy instances of this entity and will ALWAYS load the entity eagerly.

SQL Schema considerations¶

For each entity in the Class-Table Inheritance hierarchy all the mapped fields have to be columns on the table of this entity. Additionally each child table has to have an id column that matches the id column definition on the root table (except for any sequence or auto-increment details). Furthermore each child table has to have a foreign key pointing from the id column to the root table id column and cascading on delete.

Overrides¶

Used to override a mapping for an entity field or relationship. May be applied to an entity that extends a mapped superclass to override a relationship or field mapping defined by the mapped superclass.

Association Override¶

Override a mapping for an entity relationship.

Could be used by an entity that extends a mapped superclass to override a relationship mapping defined by the mapped superclass.

Example:

PHP

<?php
// user mapping
namespace MyProject\Model;
/**
 * @MappedSuperclass
 */
class User
{
    //other fields mapping

    /**
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group", inversedBy="users")
     * @JoinTable(name="users_groups",
     *  joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *  inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="group_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     * )
     */
    protected $groups;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Address")
     * @JoinColumn(name="address_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     */
    protected $address;
}

// admin mapping
namespace MyProject\Model;
/**
 * @Entity
 * @AssociationOverrides({
 *      @AssociationOverride(name="groups",
 *          joinTable=@JoinTable(
 *              name="users_admingroups",
 *              joinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="adminuser_id"),
 *              inverseJoinColumns=@JoinColumn(name="admingroup_id")
 *          )
 *      ),
 *      @AssociationOverride(name="address",
 *          joinColumns=@JoinColumn(
 *              name="adminaddress_id", referencedColumnName="id"
 *          )
 *      )
 * })
 */
class Admin extends User
{
}

XML

<!-- user mapping -->
<doctrine-mapping>
  <mapped-superclass name="MyProject\Model\User">
        <!-- other fields mapping -->
        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group" inversed-by="users">
            <cascade>
                <cascade-persist/>
                <cascade-merge/>
                <cascade-detach/>
            </cascade>
            <join-table name="users_groups">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column name="group_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>
    </mapped-superclass>
</doctrine-mapping>

<!-- admin mapping -->
<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\Admin">
        <association-overrides>
            <association-override name="groups">
                <join-table name="users_admingroups">
                    <join-columns>
                        <join-column name="adminuser_id"/>
                    </join-columns>
                    <inverse-join-columns>
                        <join-column name="admingroup_id"/>
                    </inverse-join-columns>
                </join-table>
            </association-override>
            <association-override name="address">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="adminaddress_id" referenced-column-name="id"/>
                </join-columns>
            </association-override>
        </association-overrides>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

# user mapping
MyProject\Model\User:
  type: mappedSuperclass
  # other fields mapping
  manyToOne:
    address:
      targetEntity: Address
      joinColumn:
        name: address_id
        referencedColumnName: id
      cascade: [ persist, merge ]
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group
      joinTable:
        name: users_groups
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
      cascade: [ persist, merge, detach ]

# admin mapping
MyProject\Model\Admin:
  type: entity
  associationOverride:
    address:
      joinColumn:
        adminaddress_id:
          name: adminaddress_id
          referencedColumnName: id
    groups:
      joinTable:
        name: users_admingroups
        joinColumns:
          adminuser_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          admingroup_id:
            referencedColumnName: id

Things to note:

The “association override” specifies the overrides base on the property name.
This feature is available for all kind of associations. (OneToOne, OneToMany, ManyToOne, ManyToMany)
The association type CANNOT be changed.
The override could redefine the joinTables or joinColumns depending on the association type.

Attribute Override¶

Override the mapping of a field.

Could be used by an entity that extends a mapped superclass to override a field mapping defined by the mapped superclass.

PHP

<?php
// user mapping
namespace MyProject\Model;
/**
 * @MappedSuperclass
 */
class User
{
    /** @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer", name="user_id", length=150) */
    protected $id;

    /** @Column(name="user_name", nullable=true, unique=false, length=250) */
    protected $name;

    // other fields mapping
}

// guest mapping
namespace MyProject\Model;
/**
 * @Entity
 * @AttributeOverrides({
 *      @AttributeOverride(name="id",
 *          column=@Column(
 *              name     = "guest_id",
 *              type     = "integer",
                length   = 140
 *          )
 *      ),
 *      @AttributeOverride(name="name",
 *          column=@Column(
 *              name     = "guest_name",
 *              nullable = false,
 *              unique   = true,
                length   = 240
 *          )
 *      )
 * })
 */
class Guest extends User
{
}

XML

<!-- user mapping -->
<doctrine-mapping>
  <mapped-superclass name="MyProject\Model\User">
        <id name="id" type="integer" column="user_id" length="150">
            <generator strategy="AUTO"/>
        </id>
        <field name="name" column="user_name" type="string" length="250" nullable="true" unique="false" />
        <many-to-one field="address" target-entity="Address">
            <cascade>
                <cascade-persist/>
                <cascade-merge/>
            </cascade>
            <join-column name="address_id" referenced-column-name="id"/>
        </many-to-one>
        <!-- other fields mapping -->
    </mapped-superclass>
</doctrine-mapping>

<!-- admin mapping -->
<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\Guest">
        <attribute-overrides>
            <attribute-override name="id">
                <field column="guest_id" length="140"/>
            </attribute-override>
            <attribute-override name="name">
                <field column="guest_name" type="string" length="240" nullable="false" unique="true" />
            </attribute-override>
        </attribute-overrides>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

# user mapping
MyProject\Model\User:
  type: mappedSuperclass
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      column: user_id
      length: 150
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      type: string
      column: user_name
      length: 250
      nullable: true
      unique: false
  #other fields mapping


# guest mapping
MyProject\Model\Guest:
  type: entity
  attributeOverride:
    id:
      column: guest_id
      type: integer
      length: 140
    name:
      column: guest_name
      type: string
      length: 240
      nullable: false
      unique: true

Things to note:

The “attribute override” specifies the overrides base on the property name.
The column type CANNOT be changed. if the column type is not equals you got a MappingException
The override can redefine all the column except the type.

Working with Objects¶

In this chapter we will help you understand the EntityManager and the UnitOfWork. A Unit of Work is similar to an object-level transaction. A new Unit of Work is implicitly started when an EntityManager is initially created or after EntityManager#flush() has been invoked. A Unit of Work is committed (and a new one started) by invoking EntityManager#flush().

A Unit of Work can be manually closed by calling EntityManager#close(). Any changes to objects within this Unit of Work that have not yet been persisted are lost.

Note

It is very important to understand that only EntityManager#flush() ever causes write operations against the database to be executed. Any other methods such as EntityManager#persist($entity) or EntityManager#remove($entity) only notify the UnitOfWork to perform these operations during flush.

Not calling EntityManager#flush() will lead to all changes during that request being lost.

Entities and the Identity Map¶

Entities are objects with identity. Their identity has a conceptual meaning inside your domain. In a CMS application each article has a unique id. You can uniquely identify each article by that id.

Take the following example, where you find an article with the headline “Hello World” with the ID 1234:

<?php
$article = $entityManager->find('CMS\Article', 1234);
$article->setHeadline('Hello World dude!');

$article2 = $entityManager->find('CMS\Article', 1234);
echo $article2->getHeadline();

In this case the Article is accessed from the entity manager twice, but modified in between. Doctrine 2 realizes this and will only ever give you access to one instance of the Article with ID 1234, no matter how often do you retrieve it from the EntityManager and even no matter what kind of Query method you are using (find, Repository Finder or DQL). This is called “Identity Map” pattern, which means Doctrine keeps a map of each entity and ids that have been retrieved per PHP request and keeps returning you the same instances.

In the previous example the echo prints “Hello World dude!” to the screen. You can even verify that $article and $article2 are indeed pointing to the same instance by running the following code:

<?php
if ($article === $article2) {
    echo "Yes we are the same!";
}

Sometimes you want to clear the identity map of an EntityManager to start over. We use this regularly in our unit-tests to enforce loading objects from the database again instead of serving them from the identity map. You can call EntityManager#clear() to achieve this result.

Entity Object Graph Traversal¶

Although Doctrine allows for a complete separation of your domain model (Entity classes) there will never be a situation where objects are “missing” when traversing associations. You can walk all the associations inside your entity models as deep as you want.

Take the following example of a single Article entity fetched from newly opened EntityManager.

<?php
/** @Entity */
class Article
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;

    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $headline;

    /** @ManyToOne(targetEntity="User") */
    private $author;

    /** @OneToMany(targetEntity="Comment", mappedBy="article") */
    private $comments;

    public function __construct {
        $this->comments = new ArrayCollection();
    }

    public function getAuthor() { return $this->author; }
    public function getComments() { return $this->comments; }
}

$article = $em->find('Article', 1);

This code only retrieves the Article instance with id 1 executing a single SELECT statement against the user table in the database. You can still access the associated properties author and comments and the associated objects they contain.

This works by utilizing the lazy loading pattern. Instead of passing you back a real Author instance and a collection of comments Doctrine will create proxy instances for you. Only if you access these proxies for the first time they will go through the EntityManager and load their state from the database.

This lazy-loading process happens behind the scenes, hidden from your code. See the following code:

<?php
$article = $em->find('Article', 1);

// accessing a method of the user instance triggers the lazy-load
echo "Author: " . $article->getAuthor()->getName() . "\n";

// Lazy Loading Proxies pass instanceof tests:
if ($article->getAuthor() instanceof User) {
    // a User Proxy is a generated "UserProxy" class
}

// accessing the comments as an iterator triggers the lazy-load
// retrieving ALL the comments of this article from the database
// using a single SELECT statement
foreach ($article->getComments() AS $comment) {
    echo $comment->getText() . "\n\n";
}

// Article::$comments passes instanceof tests for the Collection interface
// But it will NOT pass for the ArrayCollection interface
if ($article->getComments() instanceof \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection) {
    echo "This will always be true!";
}

A slice of the generated proxy classes code looks like the following piece of code. A real proxy class override ALL public methods along the lines of the getName() method shown below:

<?php
class UserProxy extends User implements Proxy
{
    private function _load()
    {
        // lazy loading code
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        $this->_load();
        return parent::getName();
    }
    // .. other public methods of User
}

Warning

Traversing the object graph for parts that are lazy-loaded will easily trigger lots of SQL queries and will perform badly if used to heavily. Make sure to use DQL to fetch-join all the parts of the object-graph that you need as efficiently as possible.

Persisting entities¶

An entity can be made persistent by passing it to the EntityManager#persist($entity) method. By applying the persist operation on some entity, that entity becomes MANAGED, which means that its persistence is from now on managed by an EntityManager. As a result the persistent state of such an entity will subsequently be properly synchronized with the database when EntityManager#flush() is invoked.

Note

Invoking the persist method on an entity does NOT cause an immediate SQL INSERT to be issued on the database. Doctrine applies a strategy called “transactional write-behind”, which means that it will delay most SQL commands until EntityManager#flush() is invoked which will then issue all necessary SQL statements to synchronize your objects with the database in the most efficient way and a single, short transaction, taking care of maintaining referential integrity.

Example:

<?php
$user = new User;
$user->setName('Mr.Right');
$em->persist($user);
$em->flush();

Note

Generated entity identifiers / primary keys are guaranteed to be available after the next successful flush operation that involves the entity in question. You can not rely on a generated identifier to be available directly after invoking persist. The inverse is also true. You can not rely on a generated identifier being not available after a failed flush operation.

The semantics of the persist operation, applied on an entity X, are as follows:

If X is a new entity, it becomes managed. The entity X will be entered into the database as a result of the flush operation.
If X is a preexisting managed entity, it is ignored by the persist operation. However, the persist operation is cascaded to entities referenced by X, if the relationships from X to these other entities are mapped with cascade=PERSIST or cascade=ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”).
If X is a removed entity, it becomes managed.
If X is a detached entity, an exception will be thrown on flush.

Removing entities¶

An entity can be removed from persistent storage by passing it to the EntityManager#remove($entity) method. By applying the remove operation on some entity, that entity becomes REMOVED, which means that its persistent state will be deleted once EntityManager#flush() is invoked.

Note

Just like persist, invoking remove on an entity does NOT cause an immediate SQL DELETE to be issued on the database. The entity will be deleted on the next invocation of EntityManager#flush() that involves that entity. This means that entities scheduled for removal can still be queried for and appear in query and collection results. See the section on Database and UnitOfWork Out-Of-Sync for more information.

Example:

<?php
$em->remove($user);
$em->flush();

The semantics of the remove operation, applied to an entity X are as follows:

If X is a new entity, it is ignored by the remove operation. However, the remove operation is cascaded to entities referenced by X, if the relationship from X to these other entities is mapped with cascade=REMOVE or cascade=ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”).
If X is a managed entity, the remove operation causes it to become removed. The remove operation is cascaded to entities referenced by X, if the relationships from X to these other entities is mapped with cascade=REMOVE or cascade=ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”).
If X is a detached entity, an InvalidArgumentException will be thrown.
If X is a removed entity, it is ignored by the remove operation.
A removed entity X will be removed from the database as a result of the flush operation.

After an entity has been removed its in-memory state is the same as before the removal, except for generated identifiers.

Removing an entity will also automatically delete any existing records in many-to-many join tables that link this entity. The action taken depends on the value of the @joinColumn mapping attribute “onDelete”. Either Doctrine issues a dedicated DELETE statement for records of each join table or it depends on the foreign key semantics of onDelete=”CASCADE”.

Deleting an object with all its associated objects can be achieved in multiple ways with very different performance impacts.

If an association is marked as CASCADE=REMOVE Doctrine 2 will fetch this association. If its a Single association it will pass this entity to ´EntityManager#remove()``. If the association is a collection, Doctrine will loop over all its elements and pass them to``EntityManager#remove()`. In both cases the cascade remove semantics are applied recursively. For large object graphs this removal strategy can be very costly.
Using a DQL DELETE statement allows you to delete multiple entities of a type with a single command and without hydrating these entities. This can be very efficient to delete large object graphs from the database.
Using foreign key semantics onDelete="CASCADE" can force the database to remove all associated objects internally. This strategy is a bit tricky to get right but can be very powerful and fast. You should be aware however that using strategy 1 (CASCADE=REMOVE) completely by-passes any foreign key onDelete=CASCADE option, because Doctrine will fetch and remove all associated entities explicitly nevertheless.

Detaching entities¶

An entity is detached from an EntityManager and thus no longer managed by invoking the EntityManager#detach($entity) method on it or by cascading the detach operation to it. Changes made to the detached entity, if any (including removal of the entity), will not be synchronized to the database after the entity has been detached.

Doctrine will not hold on to any references to a detached entity.

Example:

<?php
$em->detach($entity);

The semantics of the detach operation, applied to an entity X are as follows:

If X is a managed entity, the detach operation causes it to become detached. The detach operation is cascaded to entities referenced by X, if the relationships from X to these other entities is mapped with cascade=DETACH or cascade=ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”). Entities which previously referenced X will continue to reference X.
If X is a new or detached entity, it is ignored by the detach operation.
If X is a removed entity, the detach operation is cascaded to entities referenced by X, if the relationships from X to these other entities is mapped with cascade=DETACH or cascade=ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”). Entities which previously referenced X will continue to reference X.

There are several situations in which an entity is detached automatically without invoking the detach method:

When EntityManager#clear() is invoked, all entities that are currently managed by the EntityManager instance become detached.
When serializing an entity. The entity retrieved upon subsequent unserialization will be detached (This is the case for all entities that are serialized and stored in some cache, i.e. when using the Query Result Cache).

The detach operation is usually not as frequently needed and used as persist and remove.

Merging entities¶

Merging entities refers to the merging of (usually detached) entities into the context of an EntityManager so that they become managed again. To merge the state of an entity into an EntityManager use the EntityManager#merge($entity) method. The state of the passed entity will be merged into a managed copy of this entity and this copy will subsequently be returned.

Example:

<?php
$detachedEntity = unserialize($serializedEntity); // some detached entity
$entity = $em->merge($detachedEntity);
// $entity now refers to the fully managed copy returned by the merge operation.
// The EntityManager $em now manages the persistence of $entity as usual.

Note

When you want to serialize/unserialize entities you have to make all entity properties protected, never private. The reason for this is, if you serialize a class that was a proxy instance before, the private variables won’t be serialized and a PHP Notice is thrown.

The semantics of the merge operation, applied to an entity X, are as follows:

If X is a detached entity, the state of X is copied onto a pre-existing managed entity instance X’ of the same identity.
If X is a new entity instance, a new managed copy X’ will be created and the state of X is copied onto this managed instance.
If X is a removed entity instance, an InvalidArgumentException will be thrown.
If X is a managed entity, it is ignored by the merge operation, however, the merge operation is cascaded to entities referenced by relationships from X if these relationships have been mapped with the cascade element value MERGE or ALL (see “Transitive Persistence”).
For all entities Y referenced by relationships from X having the cascade element value MERGE or ALL, Y is merged recursively as Y’. For all such Y referenced by X, X’ is set to reference Y’. (Note that if X is managed then X is the same object as X’.)
If X is an entity merged to X’, with a reference to another entity Y, where cascade=MERGE or cascade=ALL is not specified, then navigation of the same association from X’ yields a reference to a managed object Y’ with the same persistent identity as Y.

The merge operation will throw an OptimisticLockException if the entity being merged uses optimistic locking through a version field and the versions of the entity being merged and the managed copy don’t match. This usually means that the entity has been modified while being detached.

The merge operation is usually not as frequently needed and used as persist and remove. The most common scenario for the merge operation is to reattach entities to an EntityManager that come from some cache (and are therefore detached) and you want to modify and persist such an entity.

Warning

If you need to perform multiple merges of entities that share certain subparts of their object-graphs and cascade merge, then you have to call EntityManager#clear() between the successive calls to EntityManager#merge(). Otherwise you might end up with multiple copies of the “same” object in the database, however with different ids.

Note

If you load some detached entities from a cache and you do not need to persist or delete them or otherwise make use of them without the need for persistence services there is no need to use merge. I.e. you can simply pass detached objects from a cache directly to the view.

Synchronization with the Database¶

The state of persistent entities is synchronized with the database on flush of an EntityManager which commits the underlying UnitOfWork. The synchronization involves writing any updates to persistent entities and their relationships to the database. Thereby bidirectional relationships are persisted based on the references held by the owning side of the relationship as explained in the Association Mapping chapter.

When EntityManager#flush() is called, Doctrine inspects all managed, new and removed entities and will perform the following operations.

Effects of Database and UnitOfWork being Out-Of-Sync¶

As soon as you begin to change the state of entities, call persist or remove the contents of the UnitOfWork and the database will drive out of sync. They can only be synchronized by calling EntityManager#flush(). This section describes the effects of database and UnitOfWork being out of sync.

Entities that are scheduled for removal can still be queried from the database. They are returned from DQL and Repository queries and are visible in collections.
Entities that are passed to EntityManager#persist do not turn up in query results.
Entities that have changed will not be overwritten with the state from the database. This is because the identity map will detect the construction of an already existing entity and assumes its the most up to date version.

EntityManager#flush() is never called implicitly by Doctrine. You always have to trigger it manually.

Synchronizing New and Managed Entities¶

The flush operation applies to a managed entity with the following semantics:

The entity itself is synchronized to the database using a SQL UPDATE statement, only if at least one persistent field has changed.
No SQL updates are executed if the entity did not change.

The flush operation applies to a new entity with the following semantics:

The entity itself is synchronized to the database using a SQL INSERT statement.

For all (initialized) relationships of the new or managed entity the following semantics apply to each associated entity X:

If X is new and persist operations are configured to cascade on the relationship, X will be persisted.
If X is new and no persist operations are configured to cascade on the relationship, an exception will be thrown as this indicates a programming error.
If X is removed and persist operations are configured to cascade on the relationship, an exception will be thrown as this indicates a programming error (X would be re-persisted by the cascade).
If X is detached and persist operations are configured to cascade on the relationship, an exception will be thrown (This is semantically the same as passing X to persist()).

Synchronizing Removed Entities¶

The flush operation applies to a removed entity by deleting its persistent state from the database. No cascade options are relevant for removed entities on flush, the cascade remove option is already executed during EntityManager#remove($entity).

The size of a Unit of Work¶

The size of a Unit of Work mainly refers to the number of managed entities at a particular point in time.

The cost of flushing¶

How costly a flush operation is, mainly depends on two factors:

The size of the EntityManager’s current UnitOfWork.
The configured change tracking policies

You can get the size of a UnitOfWork as follows:

<?php
$uowSize = $em->getUnitOfWork()->size();

The size represents the number of managed entities in the Unit of Work. This size affects the performance of flush() operations due to change tracking (see “Change Tracking Policies”) and, of course, memory consumption, so you may want to check it from time to time during development.

Note

Do not invoke flush after every change to an entity or every single invocation of persist/remove/merge/... This is an anti-pattern and unnecessarily reduces the performance of your application. Instead, form units of work that operate on your objects and call flush when you are done. While serving a single HTTP request there should be usually no need for invoking flush more than 0-2 times.

Direct access to a Unit of Work¶

You can get direct access to the Unit of Work by calling EntityManager#getUnitOfWork(). This will return the UnitOfWork instance the EntityManager is currently using.

<?php
$uow = $em->getUnitOfWork();

Note

Directly manipulating a UnitOfWork is not recommended. When working directly with the UnitOfWork API, respect methods marked as INTERNAL by not using them and carefully read the API documentation.

Entity State¶

As outlined in the architecture overview an entity can be in one of four possible states: NEW, MANAGED, REMOVED, DETACHED. If you explicitly need to find out what the current state of an entity is in the context of a certain EntityManager you can ask the underlying UnitOfWork:

<?php
switch ($em->getUnitOfWork()->getEntityState($entity)) {
    case UnitOfWork::STATE_MANAGED:
        ...
    case UnitOfWork::STATE_REMOVED:
        ...
    case UnitOfWork::STATE_DETACHED:
        ...
    case UnitOfWork::STATE_NEW:
        ...
}

An entity is in MANAGED state if it is associated with an EntityManager and it is not REMOVED.

An entity is in REMOVED state after it has been passed to EntityManager#remove() until the next flush operation of the same EntityManager. A REMOVED entity is still associated with an EntityManager until the next flush operation.

An entity is in DETACHED state if it has persistent state and identity but is currently not associated with an EntityManager.

An entity is in NEW state if has no persistent state and identity and is not associated with an EntityManager (for example those just created via the “new” operator).

Querying¶

Doctrine 2 provides the following ways, in increasing level of power and flexibility, to query for persistent objects. You should always start with the simplest one that suits your needs.

By Primary Key¶

The most basic way to query for a persistent object is by its identifier / primary key using the EntityManager#find($entityName, $id) method. Here is an example:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager
$user = $em->find('MyProject\Domain\User', $id);

The return value is either the found entity instance or null if no instance could be found with the given identifier.

Essentially, EntityManager#find() is just a shortcut for the following:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager
$user = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->find($id);

EntityManager#getRepository($entityName) returns a repository object which provides many ways to retrieve entities of the specified type. By default, the repository instance is of type Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository. You can also use custom repository classes as shown later.

By Simple Conditions¶

To query for one or more entities based on several conditions that form a logical conjunction, use the findBy and findOneBy methods on a repository as follows:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager

// All users that are 20 years old
$users = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findBy(array('age' => 20));

// All users that are 20 years old and have a surname of 'Miller'
$users = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findBy(array('age' => 20, 'surname' => 'Miller'));

// A single user by its nickname
$user = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findOneBy(array('nickname' => 'romanb'));

You can also load by owning side associations through the repository:

<?php
$number = $em->find('MyProject\Domain\Phonenumber', 1234);
$user = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findOneBy(array('phone' => $number->getId()));

Be careful that this only works by passing the ID of the associated entity, not yet by passing the associated entity itself.

The EntityRepository#findBy() method additionally accepts orderings, limit and offset as second to fourth parameters:

<?php
$tenUsers = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findBy(array('age' => 20), array('name' => 'ASC'), 10, 0);

If you pass an array of values Doctrine will convert the query into a WHERE field IN (..) query automatically:

<?php
$users = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findBy(array('age' => array(20, 30, 40)));
// translates roughly to: SELECT * FROM users WHERE age IN (20, 30, 40)

An EntityRepository also provides a mechanism for more concise calls through its use of __call. Thus, the following two examples are equivalent:

<?php
// A single user by its nickname
$user = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findOneBy(array('nickname' => 'romanb'));

// A single user by its nickname (__call magic)
$user = $em->getRepository('MyProject\Domain\User')->findOneByNickname('romanb');

By Criteria¶

New in version 2.3.

The Repository implement the Doctrine\Common\Collections\Selectable interface. That means you can build Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria and pass them to the matching($criteria) method.

See the Working with Associations: Filtering collections.

By Eager Loading¶

Whenever you query for an entity that has persistent associations and these associations are mapped as EAGER, they will automatically be loaded together with the entity being queried and is thus immediately available to your application.

By Lazy Loading¶

Whenever you have a managed entity instance at hand, you can traverse and use any associations of that entity that are configured LAZY as if they were in-memory already. Doctrine will automatically load the associated objects on demand through the concept of lazy-loading.

By DQL¶

The most powerful and flexible method to query for persistent objects is the Doctrine Query Language, an object query language. DQL enables you to query for persistent objects in the language of objects. DQL understands classes, fields, inheritance and associations. DQL is syntactically very similar to the familiar SQL but it is not SQL.

A DQL query is represented by an instance of the Doctrine\ORM\Query class. You create a query using EntityManager#createQuery($dql). Here is a simple example:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager

// All users with an age between 20 and 30 (inclusive).
$q = $em->createQuery("select u from MyDomain\Model\User u where u.age >= 20 and u.age <= 30");
$users = $q->getResult();

Note that this query contains no knowledge about the relational schema, only about the object model. DQL supports positional as well as named parameters, many functions, (fetch) joins, aggregates, subqueries and much more. Detailed information about DQL and its syntax as well as the Doctrine class can be found in the dedicated chapter. For programmatically building up queries based on conditions that are only known at runtime, Doctrine provides the special Doctrine\ORM\QueryBuilder class. More information on constructing queries with a QueryBuilder can be found in Query Builder chapter.

By Native Queries¶

As an alternative to DQL or as a fallback for special SQL statements native queries can be used. Native queries are built by using a hand-crafted SQL query and a ResultSetMapping that describes how the SQL result set should be transformed by Doctrine. More information about native queries can be found in the dedicated chapter.

Custom Repositories¶

By default the EntityManager returns a default implementation of Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository when you call EntityManager#getRepository($entityClass). You can overwrite this behaviour by specifying the class name of your own Entity Repository in the Annotation, XML or YAML metadata. In large applications that require lots of specialized DQL queries using a custom repository is one recommended way of grouping these queries in a central location.

<?php
namespace MyDomain\Model;

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;

/**
 * @entity(repositoryClass="MyDomain\Model\UserRepository")
 */
class User
{

}

class UserRepository extends EntityRepository
{
    public function getAllAdminUsers()
    {
        return $this->_em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM MyDomain\Model\User u WHERE u.status = "admin"')
                         ->getResult();
    }
}

You can access your repository now by calling:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager

$admins = $em->getRepository('MyDomain\Model\User')->getAllAdminUsers();

Working with Associations¶

Associations between entities are represented just like in regular object-oriented PHP, with references to other objects or collections of objects. When it comes to persistence, it is important to understand three main things:

The concept of owning and inverse sides in bidirectional associations.
If an entity is removed from a collection, the association is removed, not the entity itself. A collection of entities always only represents the association to the containing entities, not the entity itself.
Collection-valued persistent fields have to be instances of the Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection interface.

Changes to associations in your code are not synchronized to the database directly, but upon calling EntityManager#flush().

To describe all the concepts of working with associations we introduce a specific set of example entities that show all the different flavors of association management in Doctrine.

Association Example Entities¶

We will use a simple comment system with Users and Comments as entities to show examples of association management. See the PHP docblocks of each association in the following example for information about its type and if it’s the owning or inverse side.

<?php
/** @Entity */
class User
{
    /** @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="string") */
    private $id;

    /**
     * Bidirectional - Many users have Many favorite comments (OWNING SIDE)
     *
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Comment", inversedBy="userFavorites")
     * @JoinTable(name="user_favorite_comments",
     *   joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *   inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="favorite_comment_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     * )
     */
    private $favorites;

    /**
     * Unidirectional - Many users have marked many comments as read
     *
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Comment")
     * @JoinTable(name="user_read_comments",
     *   joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
     *   inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="comment_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
     * )
     */
    private $commentsRead;

    /**
     * Bidirectional - One-To-Many (INVERSE SIDE)
     *
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Comment", mappedBy="author")
     */
    private $commentsAuthored;

    /**
     * Unidirectional - Many-To-One
     *
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Comment")
     */
    private $firstComment;
}

/** @Entity */
class Comment
{
    /** @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="string") */
    private $id;

    /**
     * Bidirectional - Many comments are favorited by many users (INVERSE SIDE)
     *
     * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="favorites")
     */
    private $userFavorites;

    /**
     * Bidirectional - Many Comments are authored by one user (OWNING SIDE)
     *
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="commentsAuthored")
     */
     private $author;
}

This two entities generate the following MySQL Schema (Foreign Key definitions omitted):

CREATE TABLE User (
    id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    firstComment_id VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE Comment (
    id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    author_id VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE user_favorite_comments (
    user_id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    favorite_comment_id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(user_id, favorite_comment_id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE user_read_comments (
    user_id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    comment_id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(user_id, comment_id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;

Establishing Associations¶

Establishing an association between two entities is straight-forward. Here are some examples for the unidirectional relations of the User:

<?php
class User
{
    // ...
    public function getReadComments() {
         return $this->commentsRead;
    }

    public function setFirstComment(Comment $c) {
        $this->firstComment = $c;
    }
}

The interaction code would then look like in the following snippet ($em here is an instance of the EntityManager):

<?php
$user = $em->find('User', $userId);

// unidirectional many to many
$comment = $em->find('Comment', $readCommentId);
$user->getReadComments()->add($comment);

$em->flush();

// unidirectional many to one
$myFirstComment = new Comment();
$user->setFirstComment($myFirstComment);

$em->persist($myFirstComment);
$em->flush();

In the case of bi-directional associations you have to update the fields on both sides:

<?php
class User
{
    // ..

    public function getAuthoredComments() {
        return $this->commentsAuthored;
    }

    public function getFavoriteComments() {
        return $this->favorites;
    }
}

class Comment
{
    // ...

    public function getUserFavorites() {
        return $this->userFavorites;
    }

    public function setAuthor(User $author = null) {
        $this->author = $author;
    }
}

// Many-to-Many
$user->getFavorites()->add($favoriteComment);
$favoriteComment->getUserFavorites()->add($user);

$em->flush();

// Many-To-One / One-To-Many Bidirectional
$newComment = new Comment();
$user->getAuthoredComments()->add($newComment);
$newComment->setAuthor($user);

$em->persist($newComment);
$em->flush();

Notice how always both sides of the bidirectional association are updated. The previous unidirectional associations were simpler to handle.

Removing Associations¶

Removing an association between two entities is similarly straight-forward. There are two strategies to do so, by key and by element. Here are some examples:

<?php
// Remove by Elements
$user->getComments()->removeElement($comment);
$comment->setAuthor(null);

$user->getFavorites()->removeElement($comment);
$comment->getUserFavorites()->removeElement($user);

// Remove by Key
$user->getComments()->remove($ithComment);
$comment->setAuthor(null);

You need to call $em->flush() to make persist these changes in the database permanently.

Notice how both sides of the bidirectional association are always updated. Unidirectional associations are consequently simpler to handle. Also note that if you use type-hinting in your methods, i.e. setAddress(Address $address), PHP will only allow null values if null is set as default value. Otherwise setAddress(null) will fail for removing the association. If you insist on type-hinting a typical way to deal with this is to provide a special method, like removeAddress(). This can also provide better encapsulation as it hides the internal meaning of not having an address.

When working with collections, keep in mind that a Collection is essentially an ordered map (just like a PHP array). That is why the remove operation accepts an index/key. removeElement is a separate method that has O(n) complexity using array_search, where n is the size of the map.

Note

Since Doctrine always only looks at the owning side of a bidirectional association for updates, it is not necessary for write operations that an inverse collection of a bidirectional one-to-many or many-to-many association is updated. This knowledge can often be used to improve performance by avoiding the loading of the inverse collection.

You can also clear the contents of a whole collection using the Collections::clear() method. You should be aware that using this method can lead to a straight and optimized database delete or update call during the flush operation that is not aware of entities that have been re-added to the collection.

Say you clear a collection of tags by calling $post->getTags()->clear(); and then call $post->getTags()->add($tag). This will not recognize the tag having already been added previously and will consequently issue two separate database calls.

Association Management Methods¶

It is generally a good idea to encapsulate proper association management inside the entity classes. This makes it easier to use the class correctly and can encapsulate details about how the association is maintained.

The following code shows updates to the previous User and Comment example that encapsulate much of the association management code:

<?php
class User
{
    //...
    public function markCommentRead(Comment $comment) {
        // Collections implement ArrayAccess
        $this->commentsRead[] = $comment;
    }

    public function addComment(Comment $comment) {
        if (count($this->commentsAuthored) == 0) {
            $this->setFirstComment($comment);
        }
        $this->comments[] = $comment;
        $comment->setAuthor($this);
    }

    private function setFirstComment(Comment $c) {
        $this->firstComment = $c;
    }

    public function addFavorite(Comment $comment) {
        $this->favorites->add($comment);
        $comment->addUserFavorite($this);
    }

    public function removeFavorite(Comment $comment) {
        $this->favorites->removeElement($comment);
        $comment->removeUserFavorite($this);
    }
}

class Comment
{
    // ..

    public function addUserFavorite(User $user) {
        $this->userFavorites[] = $user;
    }

    public function removeUserFavorite(User $user) {
        $this->userFavorites->removeElement($user);
    }
}

You will notice that addUserFavorite and removeUserFavorite do not call addFavorite and removeFavorite, thus the bidirectional association is strictly-speaking still incomplete. However if you would naively add the addFavorite in addUserFavorite, you end up with an infinite loop, so more work is needed. As you can see, proper bidirectional association management in plain OOP is a non-trivial task and encapsulating all the details inside the classes can be challenging.

Note

If you want to make sure that your collections are perfectly encapsulated you should not return them from a getCollectionName() method directly, but call $collection->toArray(). This way a client programmer for the entity cannot circumvent the logic you implement on your entity for association management. For example:

<?php
class User {
    public function getReadComments() {
        return $this->commentsRead->toArray();
    }
}

This will however always initialize the collection, with all the performance penalties given the size. In some scenarios of large collections it might even be a good idea to completely hide the read access behind methods on the EntityRepository.

There is no single, best way for association management. It greatly depends on the requirements of your concrete domain model as well as your preferences.

Synchronizing Bidirectional Collections¶

In the case of Many-To-Many associations you as the developer have the responsibility of keeping the collections on the owning and inverse side in sync when you apply changes to them. Doctrine can only guarantee a consistent state for the hydration, not for your client code.

Using the User-Comment entities from above, a very simple example can show the possible caveats you can encounter:

<?php
$user->getFavorites()->add($favoriteComment);
// not calling $favoriteComment->getUserFavorites()->add($user);

$user->getFavorites()->contains($favoriteComment); // TRUE
$favoriteComment->getUserFavorites()->contains($user); // FALSE

There are two approaches to handle this problem in your code:

Ignore updating the inverse side of bidirectional collections, BUT never read from them in requests that changed their state. In the next Request Doctrine hydrates the consistent collection state again.
Always keep the bidirectional collections in sync through association management methods. Reads of the Collections directly after changes are consistent then.

Transitive persistence / Cascade Operations¶

Persisting, removing, detaching and merging individual entities can become pretty cumbersome, especially when a highly interweaved object graph is involved. Therefore Doctrine 2 provides a mechanism for transitive persistence through cascading of these operations. Each association to another entity or a collection of entities can be configured to automatically cascade certain operations. By default, no operations are cascaded.

The following cascade options exist:

persist : Cascades persist operations to the associated entities.
remove : Cascades remove operations to the associated entities.
merge : Cascades merge operations to the associated entities.
detach : Cascades detach operations to the associated entities.
all : Cascades persist, remove, merge and detach operations to associated entities.

Note

Cascade operations are performed in memory. That means collections and related entities are fetched into memory, even if they are still marked as lazy when the cascade operation is about to be performed. However this approach allows entity lifecycle events to be performed for each of these operations.

However, pulling objects graph into memory on cascade can cause considerable performance overhead, especially when cascading collections are large. Makes sure to weigh the benefits and downsides of each cascade operation that you define.

To rely on the database level cascade operations for the delete operation instead, you can configure each join column with the onDelete option. See the respective mapping driver chapters for more information.

The following example is an extension to the User-Comment example of this chapter. Suppose in our application a user is created whenever he writes his first comment. In this case we would use the following code:

<?php
$user = new User();
$myFirstComment = new Comment();
$user->addComment($myFirstComment);

$em->persist($user);
$em->persist($myFirstComment);
$em->flush();

Even if you persist a new User that contains our new Comment this code would fail if you removed the call to EntityManager#persist($myFirstComment). Doctrine 2 does not cascade the persist operation to all nested entities that are new as well.

More complicated is the deletion of all of a user’s comments when he is removed from the system:

$user = $em->find('User', $deleteUserId);

foreach ($user->getAuthoredComments() AS $comment) {
    $em->remove($comment);
}
$em->remove($user);
$em->flush();

Without the loop over all the authored comments Doctrine would use an UPDATE statement only to set the foreign key to NULL and only the User would be deleted from the database during the flush()-Operation.

To have Doctrine handle both cases automatically we can change the User#commentsAuthored property to cascade both the “persist” and the “remove” operation.

<?php
class User
{
    //...
    /**
     * Bidirectional - One-To-Many (INVERSE SIDE)
     *
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Comment", mappedBy="author", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
     */
    private $commentsAuthored;
    //...
}

Even though automatic cascading is convenient it should be used with care. Do not blindly apply cascade=all to all associations as it will unnecessarily degrade the performance of your application. For each cascade operation that gets activated Doctrine also applies that operation to the association, be it single or collection valued.

Persistence by Reachability: Cascade Persist¶

There are additional semantics that apply to the Cascade Persist operation. During each flush() operation Doctrine detects if there are new entities in any collection and three possible cases can happen:

New entities in a collection marked as cascade persist will be directly persisted by Doctrine.
New entities in a collection not marked as cascade persist will produce an Exception and rollback the flush() operation.
Collections without new entities are skipped.

This concept is called Persistence by Reachability: New entities that are found on already managed entities are automatically persisted as long as the association is defined as cascade persist.

Orphan Removal¶

There is another concept of cascading that is relevant only when removing entities from collections. If an Entity of type A contains references to privately owned Entities B then if the reference from A to B is removed the entity B should also be removed, because it is not used anymore.

OrphanRemoval works with one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many associations.

Note

When using the orphanRemoval=true option Doctrine makes the assumption that the entities are privately owned and will NOT be reused by other entities. If you neglect this assumption your entities will get deleted by Doctrine even if you assigned the orphaned entity to another one.

As a better example consider an Addressbook application where you have Contacts, Addresses and StandingData:

<?php

namespace Addressbook;

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Contact
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    private $id;

    /** @OneToOne(targetEntity="StandingData", orphanRemoval=true) */
    private $standingData;

    /** @OneToMany(targetEntity="Address", mappedBy="contact", orphanRemoval=true) */
    private $addresses;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->addresses = new ArrayCollection();
    }

    public function newStandingData(StandingData $sd)
    {
        $this->standingData = $sd;
    }

    public function removeAddress($pos)
    {
        unset($this->addresses[$pos]);
    }
}

Now two examples of what happens when you remove the references:

<?php

$contact = $em->find("Addressbook\Contact", $contactId);
$contact->newStandingData(new StandingData("Firstname", "Lastname", "Street"));
$contact->removeAddress(1);

$em->flush();

In this case you have not only changed the Contact entity itself but you have also removed the references for standing data and as well as one address reference. When flush is called not only are the references removed but both the old standing data and the one address entity are also deleted from the database.

Filtering Collections¶

Collections have a filtering API that allows to slice parts of data from a collection. If the collection has not been loaded from the database yet, the filtering API can work on the SQL level to make optimized access to large collections.

<?php

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria;

$group          = $entityManager->find('Group', $groupId);
$userCollection = $group->getUsers();

$criteria = Criteria::create()
    ->where(Criteria::expr()->eq("birthday", "1982-02-17"))
    ->orderBy(array("username" => "ASC"))
    ->setFirstResult(0)
    ->setMaxResults(20)
;

$birthdayUsers = $userCollection->matching($criteria);

Tip

You can move the access of slices of collections into dedicated methods of an entity. For example Group#getTodaysBirthdayUsers().

The Criteria has a limited matching language that works both on the SQL and on the PHP collection level. This means you can use collection matching interchangeably, independent of in-memory or sql-backed collections.

<?php

use Doctrine\Common\Collections;

class Criteria
{
    /**
     * @return Criteria
     */
    static public function create();
    /**
     * @param Expression $where
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function where(Expression $where);
    /**
     * @param Expression $where
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function andWhere(Expression $where);
    /**
     * @param Expression $where
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function orWhere(Expression $where);
    /**
     * @param array $orderings
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function orderBy(array $orderings);
    /**
     * @param int $firstResult
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function setFirstResult($firstResult);
    /**
     * @param int $maxResults
     * @return Criteria
     */
    public function setMaxResults($maxResults);
    public function getOrderings();
    public function getWhereExpression();
    public function getFirstResult();
    public function getMaxResults();
}

You can build expressions through the ExpressionBuilder. It has the following methods:

andX($arg1, $arg2, ...)
orX($arg1, $arg2, ...)
eq($field, $value)
gt($field, $value)
lt($field, $value)
lte($field, $value)
gte($field, $value)
neq($field, $value)
isNull($field)
in($field, array $values)
notIn($field, array $values)

Events¶

Doctrine 2 features a lightweight event system that is part of the Common package. Doctrine uses it to dispatch system events, mainly lifecycle events. You can also use it for your own custom events.

The Event System¶

The event system is controlled by the EventManager. It is the central point of Doctrine’s event listener system. Listeners are registered on the manager and events are dispatched through the manager.

<?php
$evm = new EventManager();

Now we can add some event listeners to the $evm. Let’s create a EventTest class to play around with.

<?php
class EventTest
{
    const preFoo = 'preFoo';
    const postFoo = 'postFoo';

    private $_evm;

    public $preFooInvoked = false;
    public $postFooInvoked = false;

    public function __construct($evm)
    {
        $evm->addEventListener(array(self::preFoo, self::postFoo), $this);
    }

    public function preFoo(EventArgs $e)
    {
        $this->preFooInvoked = true;
    }

    public function postFoo(EventArgs $e)
    {
        $this->postFooInvoked = true;
    }
}

// Create a new instance
$test = new EventTest($evm);

Events can be dispatched by using the dispatchEvent() method.

<?php
$evm->dispatchEvent(EventTest::preFoo);
$evm->dispatchEvent(EventTest::postFoo);

You can easily remove a listener with the removeEventListener() method.

<?php
$evm->removeEventListener(array(self::preFoo, self::postFoo), $this);

The Doctrine 2 event system also has a simple concept of event subscribers. We can define a simple TestEventSubscriber class which implements the \Doctrine\Common\EventSubscriber interface and implements a getSubscribedEvents() method which returns an array of events it should be subscribed to.

<?php
class TestEventSubscriber implements \Doctrine\Common\EventSubscriber
{
    public $preFooInvoked = false;

    public function preFoo()
    {
        $this->preFooInvoked = true;
    }

    public function getSubscribedEvents()
    {
        return array(TestEvent::preFoo);
    }
}

$eventSubscriber = new TestEventSubscriber();
$evm->addEventSubscriber($eventSubscriber);

Note

The array to return in the getSubscribedEvents method is a simple array with the values being the event names. The subscriber must have a method that is named exactly like the event.

Now when you dispatch an event, any event subscribers will be notified for that event.

<?php
$evm->dispatchEvent(TestEvent::preFoo);

Now you can test the $eventSubscriber instance to see if the preFoo() method was invoked.

<?php
if ($eventSubscriber->preFooInvoked) {
    echo 'pre foo invoked!';
}

Naming convention¶

Events being used with the Doctrine 2 EventManager are best named with camelcase and the value of the corresponding constant should be the name of the constant itself, even with spelling. This has several reasons:

It is easy to read.
Simplicity.
Each method within an EventSubscriber is named after the corresponding constant. If constant name and constant value differ, you MUST use the new value and thus, your code might be subject to codechanges when the value changes. This contradicts the intention of a constant.

An example for a correct notation can be found in the example EventTest above.

Lifecycle Events¶

The EntityManager and UnitOfWork trigger a bunch of events during the life-time of their registered entities.

preRemove - The preRemove event occurs for a given entity before the respective EntityManager remove operation for that entity is executed. It is not called for a DQL DELETE statement.
postRemove - The postRemove event occurs for an entity after the entity has been deleted. It will be invoked after the database delete operations. It is not called for a DQL DELETE statement.
prePersist - The prePersist event occurs for a given entity before the respective EntityManager persist operation for that entity is executed. It should be noted that this event is only triggered on initial persist of an entity
postPersist - The postPersist event occurs for an entity after the entity has been made persistent. It will be invoked after the database insert operations. Generated primary key values are available in the postPersist event.
preUpdate - The preUpdate event occurs before the database update operations to entity data. It is not called for a DQL UPDATE statement.
postUpdate - The postUpdate event occurs after the database update operations to entity data. It is not called for a DQL UPDATE statement.
postLoad - The postLoad event occurs for an entity after the entity has been loaded into the current EntityManager from the database or after the refresh operation has been applied to it.
loadClassMetadata - The loadClassMetadata event occurs after the mapping metadata for a class has been loaded from a mapping source (annotations/xml/yaml).
preFlush - The preFlush event occurs at the very beginning of a flush operation. This event is not a lifecycle callback.
onFlush - The onFlush event occurs after the change-sets of all managed entities are computed. This event is not a lifecycle callback.
postFlush - The postFlush event occurs at the end of a flush operation. This event is not a lifecycle callback.
onClear - The onClear event occurs when the EntityManager#clear() operation is invoked, after all references to entities have been removed from the unit of work.

Warning

Note that the postLoad event occurs for an entity before any associations have been initialized. Therefore it is not safe to access associations in a postLoad callback or event handler.

You can access the Event constants from the Events class in the ORM package.

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Events;
echo Events::preUpdate;

These can be hooked into by two different types of event listeners:

Lifecycle Callbacks are methods on the entity classes that are called when the event is triggered. As of v2.4 they receive some kind of EventArgs instance.
Lifecycle Event Listeners and Subscribers are classes with specific callback methods that receives some kind of EventArgs instance.

The EventArgs instance received by the listener gives access to the entity, EntityManager and other relevant data.

Note

All Lifecycle events that happen during the flush() of an EntityManager have very specific constraints on the allowed operations that can be executed. Please read the Implementing Event Listeners section very carefully to understand which operations are allowed in which lifecycle event.

Lifecycle Callbacks¶

Lifecycle Callbacks are defined on an entity class. They allow you to trigger callbacks whenever an instance of that entity class experiences a relevant lifecycle event. More than one callback can be defined for each lifecycle event. Lifecycle Callbacks are best used for simple operations specific to a particular entity class’s lifecycle.

<?php

/** @Entity @HasLifecycleCallbacks */
class User
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @Column(type="string", length=255)
     */
    public $value;

    /** @Column(name="created_at", type="string", length=255) */
    private $createdAt;

    /** @PrePersist */
    public function doStuffOnPrePersist()
    {
        $this->createdAt = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
    }

    /** @PrePersist */
    public function doOtherStuffOnPrePersist()
    {
        $this->value = 'changed from prePersist callback!';
    }

    /** @PostPersist */
    public function doStuffOnPostPersist()
    {
        $this->value = 'changed from postPersist callback!';
    }

    /** @PostLoad */
    public function doStuffOnPostLoad()
    {
        $this->value = 'changed from postLoad callback!';
    }

    /** @PreUpdate */
    public function doStuffOnPreUpdate()
    {
        $this->value = 'changed from preUpdate callback!';
    }
}

Note that the methods set as lifecycle callbacks need to be public and, when using these annotations, you have to apply the @HasLifecycleCallbacks marker annotation on the entity class.

If you want to register lifecycle callbacks from YAML or XML you can do it with the following.

User:
  type: entity
  fields:
# ...
    name:
      type: string(50)
  lifecycleCallbacks:
    prePersist: [ doStuffOnPrePersist, doOtherStuffOnPrePersistToo ]
    postPersist: [ doStuffOnPostPersist ]

In YAML the key of the lifecycleCallbacks entry is the event that you are triggering on and the value is the method (or methods) to call. The allowed event types are the ones listed in the previous Lifecycle Events section.

XML would look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          /Users/robo/dev/php/Doctrine/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="User">

        <lifecycle-callbacks>
            <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="doStuffOnPrePersist"/>
            <lifecycle-callback type="postPersist" method="doStuffOnPostPersist"/>
        </lifecycle-callbacks>

    </entity>

</doctrine-mapping>

In XML the type of the lifecycle-callback entry is the event that you are triggering on and the method is the method to call. The allowed event types are the ones listed in the previous Lifecycle Events section.

When using YAML or XML you need to remember to create public methods to match the callback names you defined. E.g. in these examples doStuffOnPrePersist(), doOtherStuffOnPrePersist() and doStuffOnPostPersist() methods need to be defined on your User model.

<?php
// ...

class User
{
    // ...

    public function doStuffOnPrePersist()
    {
        // ...
    }

    public function doStuffOnPostPersist()
    {
        // ...
    }
}

The key of the lifecycleCallbacks is the name of the method and the value is the event type. The allowed event types are the ones listed in the previous Lifecycle Events section.

Lifecycle Callbacks Event Argument¶

New in version 2.4.

Since 2.4 the triggered event is given to the lifecycle-callback.

With the additional argument you have access to the EntityManager and UnitOfWork APIs inside these callback methods.

<?php
// ...

class User
{
    public function preUpdate(PreUpdateEventArgs $event)
    {
        if ($event->hasChangedField('username')) {
            // Do something when the username is changed.
        }
    }
}

Listening and subscribing to Lifecycle Events¶

Lifecycle event listeners are much more powerful than the simple lifecycle callbacks that are defined on the entity classes. They sit at a level above the entities and allow you to implement re-usable behaviors across different entity classes.

Note that they require much more detailed knowledge about the inner workings of the EntityManager and UnitOfWork. Please read the Implementing Event Listeners section carefully if you are trying to write your own listener.

For event subscribers, there are no surprises. They declare the lifecycle events in their getSubscribedEvents method and provide public methods that expect the relevant arguments.

A lifecycle event listener looks like the following:

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;

class MyEventListener
{
    public function preUpdate(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $entity = $args->getObject();
        $entityManager = $args->getObjectManager();

        // perhaps you only want to act on some "Product" entity
        if ($entity instanceof Product) {
            // do something with the Product
        }
    }
}

A lifecycle event subscriber may looks like this:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Events;
use Doctrine\Common\EventSubscriber;
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;

class MyEventSubscriber implements EventSubscriber
{
    public function getSubscribedEvents()
    {
        return array(
            Events::postUpdate,
        );
    }

    public function postUpdate(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $entity = $args->getObject();
        $entityManager = $args->getObjectManager();

        // perhaps you only want to act on some "Product" entity
        if ($entity instanceof Product) {
            // do something with the Product
        }
    }

Note

Lifecycle events are triggered for all entities. It is the responsibility of the listeners and subscribers to check if the entity is of a type it wants to handle.

To register an event listener or subscriber, you have to hook it into the EventManager that is passed to the EntityManager factory:

<?php
$eventManager = new EventManager();
$eventManager->addEventListener(array(Events::preUpdate), new MyEventListener());
$eventManager->addEventSubscriber(new MyEventSubscriber());

$entityManager = EntityManager::create($dbOpts, $config, $eventManager);

You can also retrieve the event manager instance after the EntityManager was created:

<?php
$entityManager->getEventManager()->addEventListener(array(Events::preUpdate), new MyEventListener());
$entityManager->getEventManager()->addEventSubscriber(new MyEventSubscriber());

Implementing Event Listeners¶

This section explains what is and what is not allowed during specific lifecycle events of the UnitOfWork. Although you get passed the EntityManager in all of these events, you have to follow these restrictions very carefully since operations in the wrong event may produce lots of different errors, such as inconsistent data and lost updates/persists/removes.

For the described events that are also lifecycle callback events the restrictions apply as well, with the additional restriction that (prior to version 2.4) you do not have access to the EntityManager or UnitOfWork APIs inside these events.

prePersist¶

There are two ways for the prePersist event to be triggered. One is obviously when you call EntityManager#persist(). The event is also called for all cascaded associations.

There is another way for prePersist to be called, inside the flush() method when changes to associations are computed and this association is marked as cascade persist. Any new entity found during this operation is also persisted and prePersist called on it. This is called “persistence by reachability”.

In both cases you get passed a LifecycleEventArgs instance which has access to the entity and the entity manager.

The following restrictions apply to prePersist:

If you are using a PrePersist Identity Generator such as sequences the ID value will NOT be available within any PrePersist events.
Doctrine will not recognize changes made to relations in a prePersist event. This includes modifications to collections such as additions, removals or replacement.

preRemove¶

The preRemove event is called on every entity when its passed to the EntityManager#remove() method. It is cascaded for all associations that are marked as cascade delete.

There are no restrictions to what methods can be called inside the preRemove event, except when the remove method itself was called during a flush operation.

preFlush¶

preFlush is called at EntityManager#flush() before anything else. EntityManager#flush() can be called safely inside its listeners.

<?php

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\PreFlushEventArgs;

class PreFlushExampleListener
{
    public function preFlush(PreFlushEventArgs $args)
    {
        // ...
    }
}

onFlush¶

OnFlush is a very powerful event. It is called inside EntityManager#flush() after the changes to all the managed entities and their associations have been computed. This means, the onFlush event has access to the sets of:

Entities scheduled for insert
Entities scheduled for update
Entities scheduled for removal
Collections scheduled for update
Collections scheduled for removal

To make use of the onFlush event you have to be familiar with the internal UnitOfWork API, which grants you access to the previously mentioned sets. See this example:

<?php
class FlushExampleListener
{
    public function onFlush(OnFlushEventArgs $eventArgs)
    {
        $em = $eventArgs->getEntityManager();
        $uow = $em->getUnitOfWork();

        foreach ($uow->getScheduledEntityInsertions() AS $entity) {

        }

        foreach ($uow->getScheduledEntityUpdates() AS $entity) {

        }

        foreach ($uow->getScheduledEntityDeletions() AS $entity) {

        }

        foreach ($uow->getScheduledCollectionDeletions() AS $col) {

        }

        foreach ($uow->getScheduledCollectionUpdates() AS $col) {

        }
    }
}

The following restrictions apply to the onFlush event:

If you create and persist a new entity in “onFlush”, then calling EntityManager#persist() is not enough. You have to execute an additional call to $unitOfWork->computeChangeSet($classMetadata, $entity).
Changing primitive fields or associations requires you to explicitly trigger a re-computation of the changeset of the affected entity. This can be done by either calling $unitOfWork->recomputeSingleEntityChangeSet($classMetadata, $entity).

postFlush¶

postFlush is called at the end of EntityManager#flush(). EntityManager#flush() can NOT be called safely inside its listeners.

<?php

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\PostFlushEventArgs;

class PostFlushExampleListener
{
    public function postFlush(PostFlushEventArgs $args)
    {
        // ...
    }
}

preUpdate¶

PreUpdate is the most restrictive to use event, since it is called right before an update statement is called for an entity inside the EntityManager#flush() method.

Changes to associations of the updated entity are never allowed in this event, since Doctrine cannot guarantee to correctly handle referential integrity at this point of the flush operation. This event has a powerful feature however, it is executed with a PreUpdateEventArgs instance, which contains a reference to the computed change-set of this entity.

This means you have access to all the fields that have changed for this entity with their old and new value. The following methods are available on the PreUpdateEventArgs:

getEntity() to get access to the actual entity.
getEntityChangeSet() to get a copy of the changeset array. Changes to this returned array do not affect updating.
hasChangedField($fieldName) to check if the given field name of the current entity changed.
getOldValue($fieldName) and getNewValue($fieldName) to access the values of a field.
setNewValue($fieldName, $value) to change the value of a field to be updated.

A simple example for this event looks like:

<?php
class NeverAliceOnlyBobListener
{
    public function preUpdate(PreUpdateEventArgs $eventArgs)
    {
        if ($eventArgs->getEntity() instanceof User) {
            if ($eventArgs->hasChangedField('name') && $eventArgs->getNewValue('name') == 'Alice') {
                $eventArgs->setNewValue('name', 'Bob');
            }
        }
    }
}

You could also use this listener to implement validation of all the fields that have changed. This is more efficient than using a lifecycle callback when there are expensive validations to call:

<?php
class ValidCreditCardListener
{
    public function preUpdate(PreUpdateEventArgs $eventArgs)
    {
        if ($eventArgs->getEntity() instanceof Account) {
            if ($eventArgs->hasChangedField('creditCard')) {
                $this->validateCreditCard($eventArgs->getNewValue('creditCard'));
            }
        }
    }

    private function validateCreditCard($no)
    {
        // throw an exception to interrupt flush event. Transaction will be rolled back.
    }
}

Restrictions for this event:

Changes to associations of the passed entities are not recognized by the flush operation anymore.
Changes to fields of the passed entities are not recognized by the flush operation anymore, use the computed change-set passed to the event to modify primitive field values, e.g. use $eventArgs->setNewValue($field, $value); as in the Alice to Bob example above.
Any calls to EntityManager#persist() or EntityManager#remove(), even in combination with the UnitOfWork API are strongly discouraged and don’t work as expected outside the flush operation.

postUpdate, postRemove, postPersist¶

The three post events are called inside EntityManager#flush(). Changes in here are not relevant to the persistence in the database, but you can use these events to alter non-persistable items, like non-mapped fields, logging or even associated classes that are directly mapped by Doctrine.

postLoad¶

This event is called after an entity is constructed by the EntityManager.

Entity listeners¶

New in version 2.4.

An entity listeners is a lifecycle listener classes used for an entity.

The entity listeners mapping may be applied to an entity class or mapped superclass.
An entity listener is defined by mapping the entity class with the corresponding mapping.

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Entity;

/** @Entity @EntityListeners({"UserListener"}) */
class User
{
    // ....
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Entity\User">
        <entity-listeners>
            <entity-listener class="UserListener"/>
        </entity-listeners>
        <!-- .... -->
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Entity\User:
  type: entity
  entityListeners:
    UserListener:
  # ....

Entity listeners class¶

An Entity Listener could be any class, by default it should be a class with a no-arg constructor.

Different from Implementing Event Listeners an Entity Listener is invoked just to the specified entity
An entity listener method receives two arguments, the entity instance and the lifecycle event.
The callback method can be defined by naming convention or specifying a method mapping.
When a listener mapping is not given the parser will use the naming convention to look for a matching method, e.g. it will look for a public preUpdate() method if you are listening to the preUpdate event.
When a listener mapping is given the parser will not look for any methods using the naming convention.

<?php
class UserListener
{
    public function preUpdate(User $user, PreUpdateEventArgs $event)
    {
        // Do something on pre update.
    }
}

To define a specific event listener method you should map the listener method using the event type mapping.

PHP

<?php
class UserListener
{
    /** @PrePersist */
    public function prePersistHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PostPersist */
    public function postPersistHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PreUpdate */
    public function preUpdateHandler(User $user, PreUpdateEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PostUpdate */
    public function postUpdateHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PostRemove */
    public function postRemoveHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PreRemove */
    public function preRemoveHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PreFlush */
    public function preFlushHandler(User $user, PreFlushEventArgs $event) { // ... }

    /** @PostLoad */
    public function postLoadHandler(User $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event) { // ... }
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Entity\User">
         <entity-listeners>
            <entity-listener class="UserListener">
                <lifecycle-callback type="preFlush"      method="preFlushHandler"/>
                <lifecycle-callback type="postLoad"      method="postLoadHandler"/>

                <lifecycle-callback type="postPersist"   method="postPersistHandler"/>
                <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist"    method="prePersistHandler"/>

                <lifecycle-callback type="postUpdate"    method="postUpdateHandler"/>
                <lifecycle-callback type="preUpdate"     method="preUpdateHandler"/>

                <lifecycle-callback type="postRemove"    method="postRemoveHandler"/>
                <lifecycle-callback type="preRemove"     method="preRemoveHandler"/>
            </entity-listener>
        </entity-listeners>
        <!-- .... -->
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Entity\User:
  type: entity
  entityListeners:
    UserListener:
      preFlush: [preFlushHandler]
      postLoad: [postLoadHandler]

      postPersist: [postPersistHandler]
      prePersist: [prePersistHandler]

      postUpdate: [postUpdateHandler]
      preUpdate: [preUpdateHandler]

      postRemove: [postRemoveHandler]
      preRemove: [preRemoveHandler]
  # ....

Entity listeners resolver¶

Doctrine invoke the listener resolver to get the listener instance.

An resolver allows you register a specific Entity Listener instance.
You can also implement your own resolver by extending Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\DefaultEntityListenerResolver or implementing Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\EntityListenerResolver

Specifying an entity listener instance :

<?php
// User.php

/** @Entity @EntityListeners({"UserListener"}) */
class User
{
    // ....
}

// UserListener.php
class UserListener
{
    public function __construct(MyService $service)
    {
        $this->service = $service;
    }

    public function preUpdate(User $user, PreUpdateEventArgs $event)
    {
        $this->service->doSomething($user);
    }
}

// register a entity listener.
$listener = $container->get('user_listener');
$em->getConfiguration()->getEntityListenerResolver()->register($listener);

Implementing your own resolver :

<?php
class MyEntityListenerResolver extends \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\DefaultEntityListenerResolver
{
    public function __construct($container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    public function resolve($className)
    {
        // resolve the service id by the given class name;
        $id = 'user_listener';

        return $this->container->get($id);
    }
}

// configure the listener resolver.
$em->getConfiguration()->setEntityListenerResolver($container->get('my_resolver'));

Load ClassMetadata Event¶

When the mapping information for an entity is read, it is populated in to a ClassMetadataInfo instance. You can hook in to this process and manipulate the instance.

<?php
$test = new EventTest();
$metadataFactory = $em->getMetadataFactory();
$evm = $em->getEventManager();
$evm->addEventListener(Events::loadClassMetadata, $test);

class EventTest
{
    public function loadClassMetadata(\Doctrine\ORM\Event\LoadClassMetadataEventArgs $eventArgs)
    {
        $classMetadata = $eventArgs->getClassMetadata();
        $fieldMapping = array(
            'fieldName' => 'about',
            'type' => 'string',
            'length' => 255
        );
        $classMetadata->mapField($fieldMapping);
    }
}

Doctrine Internals explained¶

Object relational mapping is a complex topic and sufficiently understanding how Doctrine works internally helps you use its full power.

How Doctrine keeps track of Objects¶

Doctrine uses the Identity Map pattern to track objects. Whenever you fetch an object from the database, Doctrine will keep a reference to this object inside its UnitOfWork. The array holding all the entity references is two-levels deep and has the keys “root entity name” and “id”. Since Doctrine allows composite keys the id is a sorted, serialized version of all the key columns.

This allows Doctrine room for optimizations. If you call the EntityManager and ask for an entity with a specific ID twice, it will return the same instance:

public function testIdentityMap()
{
    $objectA = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);
    $objectB = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);

    $this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB)
}

Only one SELECT query will be fired against the database here. In the second EntityManager#find() call Doctrine will check the identity map first and doesn’t need to make that database roundtrip.

Even if you get a proxy object first then fetch the object by the same id you will still end up with the same reference:

public function testIdentityMapReference()
{
    $objectA = $this->entityManager->getReference('EntityName', 1);
    // check for proxyinterface
    $this->assertInstanceOf('Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\Proxy', $objectA);

    $objectB = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);

    $this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB)
}

The identity map being indexed by primary keys only allows shortcuts when you ask for objects by primary key. Assume you have the following persons table:

id | name
-------------
1  | Benjamin
2  | Bud

Take the following example where two consecutive calls are made against a repository to fetch an entity by a set of criteria:

public function testIdentityMapRepositoryFindBy()
{
    $repository = $this->entityManager->getRepository('Person');
    $objectA = $repository->findOneBy(array('name' => 'Benjamin'));
    $objectB = $repository->findOneBy(array('name' => 'Benjamin'));

    $this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB);
}

This query will still return the same references and $objectA and $objectB are indeed referencing the same object. However when checking your SQL logs you will realize that two queries have been executed against the database. Doctrine only knows objects by id, so a query for different criteria has to go to the database, even if it was executed just before.

But instead of creating a second Person object Doctrine first gets the primary key from the row and check if it already has an object inside the UnitOfWork with that primary key. In our example it finds an object and decides to return this instead of creating a new one.

The identity map has a second use-case. When you call EntityManager#flush Doctrine will ask the identity map for all objects that are currently managed. This means you don’t have to call EntityManager#persist over and over again to pass known objects to the EntityManager. This is a NO-OP for known entities, but leads to much code written that is confusing to other developers.

The following code WILL update your database with the changes made to the Person object, even if you did not call EntityManager#persist:

<?php
$user = $entityManager->find("Person", 1);
$user->setName("Guilherme");
$entityManager->flush();

How Doctrine Detects Changes¶

Doctrine is a data-mapper that tries to achieve persistence-ignorance (PI). This means you map php objects into a relational database that don’t necessarily know about the database at all. A natural question would now be, “how does Doctrine even detect objects have changed?”.

For this Doctrine keeps a second map inside the UnitOfWork. Whenever you fetch an object from the database Doctrine will keep a copy of all the properties and associations inside the UnitOfWork. Because variables in the PHP language are subject to “copy-on-write” the memory usage of a PHP request that only reads objects from the database is the same as if Doctrine did not keep this variable copy. Only if you start changing variables PHP will create new variables internally that consume new memory.

Now whenever you call EntityManager#flush Doctrine will iterate over the Identity Map and for each object compares the original property and association values with the values that are currently set on the object. If changes are detected then the object is queued for a SQL UPDATE operation. Only the fields that actually changed are updated.

This process has an obvious performance impact. The larger the size of the UnitOfWork is, the longer this computation takes. There are several ways to optimize the performance of the Flush Operation:

Mark entities as read only. These entities can only be inserted or removed, but are never updated. They are omitted in the changeset calculation.
Temporarily mark entities as read only. If you have a very large UnitOfWork but know that a large set of entities has not changed, just mark them as read only with $entityManager->getUnitOfWork()->markReadOnly($entity).
Flush only a single entity with $entityManager->flush($entity).
Use Change Tracking Policies to use more explicit strategies of notifying the UnitOfWork what objects/properties changed.

Query Internals¶

The different ORM Layers¶

Doctrine ships with a set of layers with different responsibilities. This section gives a short explanation of each layer.

Hydration¶

Responsible for creating a final result from a raw database statement and a result-set mapping object. The developer can choose which kind of result he wishes to be hydrated. Default result-types include:

SQL to Entities
SQL to structured Arrays
SQL to simple scalar result arrays
SQL to a single result variable

Hydration to entities and arrays is one of most complex parts of Doctrine algorithm-wise. It can built results with for example:

Single table selects
Joins with n:1 or 1:n cardinality, grouping belonging to the same parent.
Mixed results of objects and scalar values
Hydration of results by a given scalar value as key.

Persisters¶

tbr

UnitOfWork¶

tbr

ResultSetMapping¶

tbr

DQL Parser¶

tbr

SQLWalker¶

tbr

EntityManager¶

tbr

ClassMetadataFactory¶

tbr

Association Updates: Owning Side and Inverse Side¶

When mapping bidirectional associations it is important to understand the concept of the owning and inverse sides. The following general rules apply:

Relationships may be bidirectional or unidirectional.
A bidirectional relationship has both an owning side and an inverse side
A unidirectional relationship only has an owning side.
Doctrine will only check the owning side of an association for changes.

Bidirectional Associations¶

The following rules apply to bidirectional associations:

The inverse side has to use the mappedBy attribute of the OneToOne, OneToMany, or ManyToMany mapping declaration. The mappedBy attribute contains the name of the association-field on the owning side.
The owning side has to use the inversedBy attribute of the OneToOne, ManyToOne, or ManyToMany mapping declaration. The inversedBy attribute contains the name of the association-field on the inverse-side.
ManyToOne is always the owning side of a bidirectional association.
OneToMany is always the inverse side of a bidirectional association.
The owning side of a OneToOne association is the entity with the table containing the foreign key.
You can pick the owning side of a many-to-many association yourself.

Important concepts¶

Doctrine will only check the owning side of an association for changes.

To fully understand this, remember how bidirectional associations are maintained in the object world. There are 2 references on each side of the association and these 2 references both represent the same association but can change independently of one another. Of course, in a correct application the semantics of the bidirectional association are properly maintained by the application developer (that’s his responsibility). Doctrine needs to know which of these two in-memory references is the one that should be persisted and which not. This is what the owning/inverse concept is mainly used for.

Changes made only to the inverse side of an association are ignored. Make sure to update both sides of a bidirectional association (or at least the owning side, from Doctrine’s point of view)

The owning side of a bidirectional association is the side Doctrine “looks at” when determining the state of the association, and consequently whether there is anything to do to update the association in the database.

Note

“Owning side” and “inverse side” are technical concepts of the ORM technology, not concepts of your domain model. What you consider as the owning side in your domain model can be different from what the owning side is for Doctrine. These are unrelated.

Transactions and Concurrency¶

Transaction Demarcation¶

Transaction demarcation is the task of defining your transaction boundaries. Proper transaction demarcation is very important because if not done properly it can negatively affect the performance of your application. Many databases and database abstraction layers like PDO by default operate in auto-commit mode, which means that every single SQL statement is wrapped in a small transaction. Without any explicit transaction demarcation from your side, this quickly results in poor performance because transactions are not cheap.

For the most part, Doctrine 2 already takes care of proper transaction demarcation for you: All the write operations (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) are queued until EntityManager#flush() is invoked which wraps all of these changes in a single transaction.

However, Doctrine 2 also allows (and encourages) you to take over and control transaction demarcation yourself.

These are two ways to deal with transactions when using the Doctrine ORM and are now described in more detail.

Approach 1: Implicitly¶

The first approach is to use the implicit transaction handling provided by the Doctrine ORM EntityManager. Given the following code snippet, without any explicit transaction demarcation:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager
$user = new User;
$user->setName('George');
$em->persist($user);
$em->flush();

Since we do not do any custom transaction demarcation in the above code, EntityManager#flush() will begin and commit/rollback a transaction. This behavior is made possible by the aggregation of the DML operations by the Doctrine ORM and is sufficient if all the data manipulation that is part of a unit of work happens through the domain model and thus the ORM.

Approach 2: Explicitly¶

The explicit alternative is to use the Doctrine\DBAL\Connection API directly to control the transaction boundaries. The code then looks like this:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager
$em->getConnection()->beginTransaction(); // suspend auto-commit
try {
    //... do some work
    $user = new User;
    $user->setName('George');
    $em->persist($user);
    $em->flush();
    $em->getConnection()->commit();
} catch (Exception $e) {
    $em->getConnection()->rollback();
    $em->close();
    throw $e;
}

Explicit transaction demarcation is required when you want to include custom DBAL operations in a unit of work or when you want to make use of some methods of the EntityManager API that require an active transaction. Such methods will throw a TransactionRequiredException to inform you of that requirement.

A more convenient alternative for explicit transaction demarcation is the use of provided control abstractions in the form of Connection#transactional($func) and EntityManager#transactional($func). When used, these control abstractions ensure that you never forget to rollback the transaction or close the EntityManager, apart from the obvious code reduction. An example that is functionally equivalent to the previously shown code looks as follows:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager
$em->transactional(function($em) {
    //... do some work
    $user = new User;
    $user->setName('George');
    $em->persist($user);
});

The difference between Connection#transactional($func) and EntityManager#transactional($func) is that the latter abstraction flushes the EntityManager prior to transaction commit and also closes the EntityManager properly when an exception occurs (in addition to rolling back the transaction).

Exception Handling¶

When using implicit transaction demarcation and an exception occurs during EntityManager#flush(), the transaction is automatically rolled back and the EntityManager closed.

When using explicit transaction demarcation and an exception occurs, the transaction should be rolled back immediately and the EntityManager closed by invoking EntityManager#close() and subsequently discarded, as demonstrated in the example above. This can be handled elegantly by the control abstractions shown earlier. Note that when catching Exception you should generally re-throw the exception. If you intend to recover from some exceptions, catch them explicitly in earlier catch blocks (but do not forget to rollback the transaction and close the EntityManager there as well). All other best practices of exception handling apply similarly (i.e. either log or re-throw, not both, etc.).

As a result of this procedure, all previously managed or removed instances of the EntityManager become detached. The state of the detached objects will be the state at the point at which the transaction was rolled back. The state of the objects is in no way rolled back and thus the objects are now out of synch with the database. The application can continue to use the detached objects, knowing that their state is potentially no longer accurate.

If you intend to start another unit of work after an exception has occurred you should do that with a new EntityManager.

Locking Support¶

Doctrine 2 offers support for Pessimistic- and Optimistic-locking strategies natively. This allows to take very fine-grained control over what kind of locking is required for your Entities in your application.

Optimistic Locking¶

Database transactions are fine for concurrency control during a single request. However, a database transaction should not span across requests, the so-called “user think time”. Therefore a long-running “business transaction” that spans multiple requests needs to involve several database transactions. Thus, database transactions alone can no longer control concurrency during such a long-running business transaction. Concurrency control becomes the partial responsibility of the application itself.

Doctrine has integrated support for automatic optimistic locking via a version field. In this approach any entity that should be protected against concurrent modifications during long-running business transactions gets a version field that is either a simple number (mapping type: integer) or a timestamp (mapping type: datetime). When changes to such an entity are persisted at the end of a long-running conversation the version of the entity is compared to the version in the database and if they don’t match, an OptimisticLockException is thrown, indicating that the entity has been modified by someone else already.

You designate a version field in an entity as follows. In this example we’ll use an integer.

<?php
class User
{
    // ...
    /** @Version @Column(type="integer") */
    private $version;
    // ...
}

Alternatively a datetime type can be used (which maps to a SQL timestamp or datetime):

<?php
class User
{
    // ...
    /** @Version @Column(type="datetime") */
    private $version;
    // ...
}

Version numbers (not timestamps) should however be preferred as they can not potentially conflict in a highly concurrent environment, unlike timestamps where this is a possibility, depending on the resolution of the timestamp on the particular database platform.

When a version conflict is encountered during EntityManager#flush(), an OptimisticLockException is thrown and the active transaction rolled back (or marked for rollback). This exception can be caught and handled. Potential responses to an OptimisticLockException are to present the conflict to the user or to refresh or reload objects in a new transaction and then retrying the transaction.

With PHP promoting a share-nothing architecture, the time between showing an update form and actually modifying the entity can in the worst scenario be as long as your applications session timeout. If changes happen to the entity in that time frame you want to know directly when retrieving the entity that you will hit an optimistic locking exception:

You can always verify the version of an entity during a request either when calling EntityManager#find():

<?php
use Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode;
use Doctrine\ORM\OptimisticLockException;

$theEntityId = 1;
$expectedVersion = 184;

try {
    $entity = $em->find('User', $theEntityId, LockMode::OPTIMISTIC, $expectedVersion);

    // do the work

    $em->flush();
} catch(OptimisticLockException $e) {
    echo "Sorry, but someone else has already changed this entity. Please apply the changes again!";
}

Or you can use EntityManager#lock() to find out:

<?php
use Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode;
use Doctrine\ORM\OptimisticLockException;

$theEntityId = 1;
$expectedVersion = 184;

$entity = $em->find('User', $theEntityId);

try {
    // assert version
    $em->lock($entity, LockMode::OPTIMISTIC, $expectedVersion);

} catch(OptimisticLockException $e) {
    echo "Sorry, but someone else has already changed this entity. Please apply the changes again!";
}

Important Implementation Notes¶

You can easily get the optimistic locking workflow wrong if you compare the wrong versions. Say you have Alice and Bob editing a hypothetical blog post:

Alice reads the headline of the blog post being “Foo”, at optimistic lock version 1 (GET Request)
Bob reads the headline of the blog post being “Foo”, at optimistic lock version 1 (GET Request)
Bob updates the headline to “Bar”, upgrading the optimistic lock version to 2 (POST Request of a Form)
Alice updates the headline to “Baz”, ... (POST Request of a Form)

Now at the last stage of this scenario the blog post has to be read again from the database before Alice’s headline can be applied. At this point you will want to check if the blog post is still at version 1 (which it is not in this scenario).

Using optimistic locking correctly, you have to add the version as an additional hidden field (or into the SESSION for more safety). Otherwise you cannot verify the version is still the one being originally read from the database when Alice performed her GET request for the blog post. If this happens you might see lost updates you wanted to prevent with Optimistic Locking.

See the example code, The form (GET Request):

<?php
$post = $em->find('BlogPost', 123456);

echo '<input type="hidden" name="id" value="' . $post->getId() . '" />';
echo '<input type="hidden" name="version" value="' . $post->getCurrentVersion() . '" />';

And the change headline action (POST Request):

<?php
$postId = (int)$_GET['id'];
$postVersion = (int)$_GET['version'];

$post = $em->find('BlogPost', $postId, \Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::OPTIMISTIC, $postVersion);

Pessimistic Locking¶

Doctrine 2 supports Pessimistic Locking at the database level. No attempt is being made to implement pessimistic locking inside Doctrine, rather vendor-specific and ANSI-SQL commands are used to acquire row-level locks. Every Entity can be part of a pessimistic lock, there is no special metadata required to use this feature.

However for Pessimistic Locking to work you have to disable the Auto-Commit Mode of your Database and start a transaction around your pessimistic lock use-case using the “Approach 2: Explicit Transaction Demarcation” described above. Doctrine 2 will throw an Exception if you attempt to acquire an pessimistic lock and no transaction is running.

Doctrine 2 currently supports two pessimistic lock modes:

Pessimistic Write (Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_WRITE), locks the underlying database rows for concurrent Read and Write Operations.
Pessimistic Read (Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_READ), locks other concurrent requests that attempt to update or lock rows in write mode.

You can use pessimistic locks in three different scenarios:

Using EntityManager#find($className, $id, \Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_WRITE) or EntityManager#find($className, $id, \Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_READ)
Using EntityManager#lock($entity, \Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_WRITE) or EntityManager#lock($entity, \Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_READ)
Using Query#setLockMode(\Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_WRITE) or Query#setLockMode(\Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_READ)

Batch Processing¶

This chapter shows you how to accomplish bulk inserts, updates and deletes with Doctrine in an efficient way. The main problem with bulk operations is usually not to run out of memory and this is especially what the strategies presented here provide help with.

Warning

An ORM tool is not primarily well-suited for mass inserts, updates or deletions. Every RDBMS has its own, most effective way of dealing with such operations and if the options outlined below are not sufficient for your purposes we recommend you use the tools for your particular RDBMS for these bulk operations.

Bulk Inserts¶

Bulk inserts in Doctrine are best performed in batches, taking advantage of the transactional write-behind behavior of an EntityManager. The following code shows an example for inserting 10000 objects with a batch size of 20. You may need to experiment with the batch size to find the size that works best for you. Larger batch sizes mean more prepared statement reuse internally but also mean more work during flush.

<?php
$batchSize = 20;
for ($i = 1; $i <= 10000; ++$i) {
    $user = new CmsUser;
    $user->setStatus('user');
    $user->setUsername('user' . $i);
    $user->setName('Mr.Smith-' . $i);
    $em->persist($user);
    if (($i % $batchSize) === 0) {
        $em->flush();
        $em->clear(); // Detaches all objects from Doctrine!
    }
}

Bulk Updates¶

There are 2 possibilities for bulk updates with Doctrine.

DQL UPDATE¶

The by far most efficient way for bulk updates is to use a DQL UPDATE query. Example:

<?php
$q = $em->createQuery('update MyProject\Model\Manager m set m.salary = m.salary * 0.9');
$numUpdated = $q->execute();

Iterating results¶

An alternative solution for bulk updates is to use the Query#iterate() facility to iterate over the query results step by step instead of loading the whole result into memory at once. The following example shows how to do this, combining the iteration with the batching strategy that was already used for bulk inserts:

<?php
$batchSize = 20;
$i = 0;
$q = $em->createQuery('select u from MyProject\Model\User u');
$iterableResult = $q->iterate();
foreach($iterableResult AS $row) {
    $user = $row[0];
    $user->increaseCredit();
    $user->calculateNewBonuses();
    if (($i % $batchSize) === 0) {
        $em->flush(); // Executes all updates.
        $em->clear(); // Detaches all objects from Doctrine!
    }
    ++$i;
}
$em->flush();

Note

Iterating results is not possible with queries that fetch-join a collection-valued association. The nature of such SQL result sets is not suitable for incremental hydration.

Bulk Deletes¶

There are two possibilities for bulk deletes with Doctrine. You can either issue a single DQL DELETE query or you can iterate over results removing them one at a time.

DQL DELETE¶

The by far most efficient way for bulk deletes is to use a DQL DELETE query.

Example:

<?php
$q = $em->createQuery('delete from MyProject\Model\Manager m where m.salary > 100000');
$numDeleted = $q->execute();

Iterating results¶

An alternative solution for bulk deletes is to use the Query#iterate() facility to iterate over the query results step by step instead of loading the whole result into memory at once. The following example shows how to do this:

<?php
$batchSize = 20;
$i = 0;
$q = $em->createQuery('select u from MyProject\Model\User u');
$iterableResult = $q->iterate();
while (($row = $iterableResult->next()) !== false) {
    $em->remove($row[0]);
    if (($i % $batchSize) === 0) {
        $em->flush(); // Executes all deletions.
        $em->clear(); // Detaches all objects from Doctrine!
    }
    ++$i;
}
$em->flush();

Note

Iterating results is not possible with queries that fetch-join a collection-valued association. The nature of such SQL result sets is not suitable for incremental hydration.

Iterating Large Results for Data-Processing¶

You can use the iterate() method just to iterate over a large result and no UPDATE or DELETE intention. The IterableResult instance returned from $query->iterate() implements the Iterator interface so you can process a large result without memory problems using the following approach:

<?php
$q = $this->_em->createQuery('select u from MyProject\Model\User u');
$iterableResult = $q->iterate();
foreach ($iterableResult AS $row) {
    // do stuff with the data in the row, $row[0] is always the object

    // detach from Doctrine, so that it can be Garbage-Collected immediately
    $this->_em->detach($row[0]);
}

Note

Iterating results is not possible with queries that fetch-join a collection-valued association. The nature of such SQL result sets is not suitable for incremental hydration.

Doctrine Query Language¶

DQL stands for Doctrine Query Language and is an Object Query Language derivate that is very similar to the Hibernate Query Language (HQL) or the Java Persistence Query Language (JPQL).

In essence, DQL provides powerful querying capabilities over your object model. Imagine all your objects lying around in some storage (like an object database). When writing DQL queries, think about querying that storage to pick a certain subset of your objects.

Note

A common mistake for beginners is to mistake DQL for being just some form of SQL and therefore trying to use table names and column names or join arbitrary tables together in a query. You need to think about DQL as a query language for your object model, not for your relational schema.

DQL is case in-sensitive, except for namespace, class and field names, which are case sensitive.

Types of DQL queries¶

DQL as a query language has SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE constructs that map to their corresponding SQL statement types. INSERT statements are not allowed in DQL, because entities and their relations have to be introduced into the persistence context through EntityManager#persist() to ensure consistency of your object model.

DQL SELECT statements are a very powerful way of retrieving parts of your domain model that are not accessible via associations. Additionally they allow to retrieve entities and their associations in one single SQL select statement which can make a huge difference in performance in contrast to using several queries.

DQL UPDATE and DELETE statements offer a way to execute bulk changes on the entities of your domain model. This is often necessary when you cannot load all the affected entities of a bulk update into memory.

SELECT queries¶

DQL SELECT clause¶

The select clause of a DQL query specifies what appears in the query result. The composition of all the expressions in the select clause also influences the nature of the query result.

Here is an example that selects all users with an age > 20:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM MyProject\Model\User u WHERE u.age > 20');
$users = $query->getResult();

Lets examine the query:

u is a so called identification variable or alias that refers to the MyProject\Model\User class. By placing this alias in the SELECT clause we specify that we want all instances of the User class that are matched by this query to appear in the query result.
The FROM keyword is always followed by a fully-qualified class name which in turn is followed by an identification variable or alias for that class name. This class designates a root of our query from which we can navigate further via joins (explained later) and path expressions.
The expression u.age in the WHERE clause is a path expression. Path expressions in DQL are easily identified by the use of the ‘.’ operator that is used for constructing paths. The path expression u.age refers to the age field on the User class.

The result of this query would be a list of User objects where all users are older than 20.

The SELECT clause allows to specify both class identification variables that signal the hydration of a complete entity class or just fields of the entity using the syntax u.name. Combinations of both are also allowed and it is possible to wrap both fields and identification values into aggregation and DQL functions. Numerical fields can be part of computations using mathematical operations. See the sub-section on Functions, Operators, Aggregates for more information.

Joins¶

A SELECT query can contain joins. There are 2 types of JOINs: “Regular” Joins and “Fetch” Joins.

Regular Joins: Used to limit the results and/or compute aggregate values.

Fetch Joins: In addition to the uses of regular joins: Used to fetch related entities and include them in the hydrated result of a query.

There is no special DQL keyword that distinguishes a regular join from a fetch join. A join (be it an inner or outer join) becomes a “fetch join” as soon as fields of the joined entity appear in the SELECT part of the DQL query outside of an aggregate function. Otherwise its a “regular join”.

Example:

Regular join of the address:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u FROM User u JOIN u.address a WHERE a.city = 'Berlin'");
$users = $query->getResult();

Fetch join of the address:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u, a FROM User u JOIN u.address a WHERE a.city = 'Berlin'");
$users = $query->getResult();

When Doctrine hydrates a query with fetch-join it returns the class in the FROM clause on the root level of the result array. In the previous example an array of User instances is returned and the address of each user is fetched and hydrated into the User#address variable. If you access the address Doctrine does not need to lazy load the association with another query.

Note

Doctrine allows you to walk all the associations between all the objects in your domain model. Objects that were not already loaded from the database are replaced with lazy load proxy instances. Non-loaded Collections are also replaced by lazy-load instances that fetch all the contained objects upon first access. However relying on the lazy-load mechanism leads to many small queries executed against the database, which can significantly affect the performance of your application. Fetch Joins are the solution to hydrate most or all of the entities that you need in a single SELECT query.

Named and Positional Parameters¶

DQL supports both named and positional parameters, however in contrast to many SQL dialects positional parameters are specified with numbers, for example ”?1”, ”?2” and so on. Named parameters are specified with ”:name1”, ”:name2” and so on.

When referencing the parameters in Query#setParameter($param, $value) both named and positional parameters are used without their prefixes.

DQL SELECT Examples¶

This section contains a large set of DQL queries and some explanations of what is happening. The actual result also depends on the hydration mode.

Hydrate all User entities:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM MyProject\Model\User u');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of User objects

Retrieve the IDs of all CmsUsers:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.id FROM CmsUser u');
$ids = $query->getResult(); // array of CmsUser ids

Retrieve the IDs of all users that have written an article:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT DISTINCT u.id FROM CmsArticle a JOIN a.user u');
$ids = $query->getResult(); // array of CmsUser ids

Retrieve all articles and sort them by the name of the articles users instance:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT a FROM CmsArticle a JOIN a.user u ORDER BY u.name ASC');
$articles = $query->getResult(); // array of CmsArticle objects

Retrieve the Username and Name of a CmsUser:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.username, u.name FROM CmsUser u');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of CmsUser username and name values
echo $users[0]['username'];

Retrieve a ForumUser and his single associated entity:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u, a FROM ForumUser u JOIN u.avatar a');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects with the avatar association loaded
echo get_class($users[0]->getAvatar());

Retrieve a CmsUser and fetch join all the phonenumbers he has:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u, p FROM CmsUser u JOIN u.phonenumbers p');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of CmsUser objects with the phonenumbers association loaded
$phonenumbers = $users[0]->getPhonenumbers();

Hydrate a result in Ascending:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM ForumUser u ORDER BY u.id ASC');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

Or in Descending Order:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM ForumUser u ORDER BY u.id DESC');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

Using Aggregate Functions:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT COUNT(u.id) FROM Entities\User u');
$count = $query->getSingleScalarResult();

$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u, count(g.id) FROM Entities\User u JOIN u.groups g GROUP BY u.id');
$result = $query->getResult();

With WHERE Clause and Positional Parameter:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM ForumUser u WHERE u.id = ?1');
$query->setParameter(1, 321);
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

With WHERE Clause and Named Parameter:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM ForumUser u WHERE u.username = :name');
$query->setParameter('name', 'Bob');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

With Nested Conditions in WHERE Clause:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u from ForumUser u WHERE (u.username = :name OR u.username = :name2) AND u.id = :id');
$query->setParameters(array(
    'name' => 'Bob',
    'name2' => 'Alice',
    'id' => 321,
));
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

With COUNT DISTINCT:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT u.name) FROM CmsUser');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

With Arithmetic Expression in WHERE clause:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u WHERE ((u.id + 5000) * u.id + 3) < 10000000');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of ForumUser objects

Using a LEFT JOIN to hydrate all user-ids and optionally associated article-ids:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.id, a.id as article_id FROM CmsUser u LEFT JOIN u.articles a');
$results = $query->getResult(); // array of user ids and every article_id for each user

Restricting a JOIN clause by additional conditions:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u FROM CmsUser u LEFT JOIN u.articles a WITH a.topic LIKE :foo");
$query->setParameter('foo', '%foo%');
$users = $query->getResult();

Using several Fetch JOINs:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u, a, p, c FROM CmsUser u JOIN u.articles a JOIN u.phonenumbers p JOIN a.comments c');
$users = $query->getResult();

BETWEEN in WHERE clause:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.name FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.id BETWEEN ?1 AND ?2');
$query->setParameter(1, 123);
$query->setParameter(2, 321);
$usernames = $query->getResult();

DQL Functions in WHERE clause:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u.name FROM CmsUser u WHERE TRIM(u.name) = 'someone'");
$usernames = $query->getResult();

IN() Expression:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.name FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.id IN(46)');
$usernames = $query->getResult();

$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.id IN (1, 2)');
$users = $query->getResult();

$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.id NOT IN (1)');
$users = $query->getResult();

CONCAT() DQL Function:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u.id FROM CmsUser u WHERE CONCAT(u.name, 's') = ?1");
$query->setParameter(1, 'Jess');
$ids = $query->getResult();

$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT CONCAT(u.id, u.name) FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.id = ?1');
$query->setParameter(1, 321);
$idUsernames = $query->getResult();

EXISTS in WHERE clause with correlated Subquery

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.id FROM CmsUser u WHERE EXISTS (SELECT p.phonenumber FROM CmsPhonenumber p WHERE p.user = u.id)');
$ids = $query->getResult();

Get all users who are members of $group.

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u.id FROM CmsUser u WHERE :groupId MEMBER OF u.groups');
$query->setParameter('groupId', $group);
$ids = $query->getResult();

Get all users that have more than 1 phonenumber

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u WHERE SIZE(u.phonenumbers) > 1');
$users = $query->getResult();

Get all users that have no phonenumber

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u WHERE u.phonenumbers IS EMPTY');
$users = $query->getResult();

Get all instances of a specific type, for use with inheritance hierarchies:

New in version 2.1.

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM Doctrine\Tests\Models\Company\CompanyPerson u WHERE u INSTANCE OF Doctrine\Tests\Models\Company\CompanyEmployee');
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM Doctrine\Tests\Models\Company\CompanyPerson u WHERE u INSTANCE OF ?1');
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM Doctrine\Tests\Models\Company\CompanyPerson u WHERE u NOT INSTANCE OF ?1');

Get all users visible on a given website that have chosen certain gender:

New in version 2.2.

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.gender IN (SELECT IDENTITY(agl.gender) FROM Site s JOIN s.activeGenderList agl WHERE s.id = ?1)');

Starting with 2.4, the IDENTITY() DQL function also works for composite primary keys:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT IDENTITY(c.location, 'latitude') AS latitude, IDENTITY(c.location, 'longitude') AS longitude FROM Checkpoint c WHERE c.user = ?1');

Partial Object Syntax¶

By default when you run a DQL query in Doctrine and select only a subset of the fields for a given entity, you do not receive objects back. Instead, you receive only arrays as a flat rectangular result set, similar to how you would if you were just using SQL directly and joining some data.

If you want to select partial objects you can use the partial DQL keyword:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT partial u.{id, username} FROM CmsUser u');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of partially loaded CmsUser objects

You use the partial syntax when joining as well:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT partial u.{id, username}, partial a.{id, name} FROM CmsUser u JOIN u.articles a');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of partially loaded CmsUser objects

“NEW” Operator Syntax¶

New in version 2.4.

Using the NEW operator you can construct Data Transfer Objects (DTOs) directly from DQL queries.

When using SELECT NEW you don’t need to specify a mapped entity.
You can specify any PHP class, it’s only require that the constructor of this class matches the NEW statement.
This approach involves determining exactly which columns you really need, and instantiating data-transfer object that containing a constructor with those arguments.

If you want to select data-transfer objects you should create a class:

<?php
class CustomerDTO
{
    public function __construct($name, $email, $city, $value = null)
    {
        // Bind values to the object properties.
    }
}

And then use the NEW DQL keyword :

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT NEW CustomerDTO(c.name, e.email, a.city) FROM Customer c JOIN c.email e JOIN c.address a');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of CustomerDTO

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT NEW CustomerDTO(c.name, e.email, a.city, SUM(o.value)) FROM Customer c JOIN c.email e JOIN c.address a JOIN c.orders o GROUP BY c');
$users = $query->getResult(); // array of CustomerDTO

Using INDEX BY¶

The INDEX BY construct is nothing that directly translates into SQL but that affects object and array hydration. After each FROM and JOIN clause you specify by which field this class should be indexed in the result. By default a result is incremented by numerical keys starting with 0. However with INDEX BY you can specify any other column to be the key of your result, it really only makes sense with primary or unique fields though:

SELECT u.id, u.status, upper(u.name) nameUpper FROM User u INDEX BY u.id
JOIN u.phonenumbers p INDEX BY p.phonenumber

Returns an array of the following kind, indexed by both user-id then phonenumber-id:

array
  0 =>
    array
      1 =>
        object(stdClass)[299]
          public '__CLASS__' => string 'Doctrine\Tests\Models\CMS\CmsUser' (length=33)
          public 'id' => int 1
          ..
      'nameUpper' => string 'ROMANB' (length=6)
  1 =>
    array
      2 =>
        object(stdClass)[298]
          public '__CLASS__' => string 'Doctrine\Tests\Models\CMS\CmsUser' (length=33)
          public 'id' => int 2
          ...
      'nameUpper' => string 'JWAGE' (length=5)

UPDATE queries¶

DQL not only allows to select your Entities using field names, you can also execute bulk updates on a set of entities using an DQL-UPDATE query. The Syntax of an UPDATE query works as expected, as the following example shows:

UPDATE MyProject\Model\User u SET u.password = 'new' WHERE u.id IN (1, 2, 3)

References to related entities are only possible in the WHERE clause and using sub-selects.

Warning

DQL UPDATE statements are ported directly into a Database UPDATE statement and therefore bypass any locking scheme, events and do not increment the version column. Entities that are already loaded into the persistence context will NOT be synced with the updated database state. It is recommended to call EntityManager#clear() and retrieve new instances of any affected entity.

DELETE queries¶

DELETE queries can also be specified using DQL and their syntax is as simple as the UPDATE syntax:

DELETE MyProject\Model\User u WHERE u.id = 4

The same restrictions apply for the reference of related entities.

Warning

DQL DELETE statements are ported directly into a Database DELETE statement and therefore bypass any events and checks for the version column if they are not explicitly added to the WHERE clause of the query. Additionally Deletes of specifies entities are NOT cascaded to related entities even if specified in the metadata.

Functions, Operators, Aggregates¶

DQL Functions¶

The following functions are supported in SELECT, WHERE and HAVING clauses:

IDENTITY(single_association_path_expression [, fieldMapping]) - Retrieve the foreign key column of association of the owning side
ABS(arithmetic_expression)
CONCAT(str1, str2)
CURRENT_DATE() - Return the current date
CURRENT_TIME() - Returns the current time
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() - Returns a timestamp of the current date and time.
LENGTH(str) - Returns the length of the given string
LOCATE(needle, haystack [, offset]) - Locate the first occurrence of the substring in the string.
LOWER(str) - returns the string lowercased.
MOD(a, b) - Return a MOD b.
SIZE(collection) - Return the number of elements in the specified collection
SQRT(q) - Return the square-root of q.
SUBSTRING(str, start [, length]) - Return substring of given string.
TRIM([LEADING | TRAILING | BOTH] [‘trchar’ FROM] str) - Trim the string by the given trim char, defaults to whitespaces.
UPPER(str) - Return the upper-case of the given string.
DATE_ADD(date, days, unit) - Add the number of days to a given date. (Supported units are DAY, MONTH)
DATE_SUB(date, days, unit) - Substract the number of days from a given date. (Supported units are DAY, MONTH)
DATE_DIFF(date1, date2) - Calculate the difference in days between date1-date2.

Arithmetic operators¶

You can do math in DQL using numeric values, for example:

SELECT person.salary * 1.5 FROM CompanyPerson person WHERE person.salary < 100000

Aggregate Functions¶

The following aggregate functions are allowed in SELECT and GROUP BY clauses: AVG, COUNT, MIN, MAX, SUM

Other Expressions¶

DQL offers a wide-range of additional expressions that are known from SQL, here is a list of all the supported constructs:

ALL/ANY/SOME - Used in a WHERE clause followed by a sub-select this works like the equivalent constructs in SQL.
BETWEEN a AND b and NOT BETWEEN a AND b can be used to match ranges of arithmetic values.
IN (x1, x2, ...) and NOT IN (x1, x2, ..) can be used to match a set of given values.
LIKE .. and NOT LIKE .. match parts of a string or text using % as a wildcard.
IS NULL and IS NOT NULL to check for null values
EXISTS and NOT EXISTS in combination with a sub-select

Adding your own functions to the DQL language¶

By default DQL comes with functions that are part of a large basis of underlying databases. However you will most likely choose a database platform at the beginning of your project and most likely never change it. For this cases you can easily extend the DQL parser with own specialized platform functions.

You can register custom DQL functions in your ORM Configuration:

<?php
$config = new \Doctrine\ORM\Configuration();
$config->addCustomStringFunction($name, $class);
$config->addCustomNumericFunction($name, $class);
$config->addCustomDatetimeFunction($name, $class);

$em = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

The functions have to return either a string, numeric or datetime value depending on the registered function type. As an example we will add a MySQL specific FLOOR() functionality. All the given classes have to implement the base class :

<?php
namespace MyProject\Query\AST;

use \Doctrine\ORM\Query\AST\Functions\FunctionNode;
use \Doctrine\ORM\Query\Lexer;

class MysqlFloor extends FunctionNode
{
    public $simpleArithmeticExpression;

    public function getSql(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\SqlWalker $sqlWalker)
    {
        return 'FLOOR(' . $sqlWalker->walkSimpleArithmeticExpression(
            $this->simpleArithmeticExpression
        ) . ')';
    }

    public function parse(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\Parser $parser)
    {
        $lexer = $parser->getLexer();

        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER);
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_OPEN_PARENTHESIS);

        $this->simpleArithmeticExpression = $parser->SimpleArithmeticExpression();

        $parser->match(Lexer::T_CLOSE_PARENTHESIS);
    }
}

We will register the function by calling and can then use it:

<?php
$config = $em->getConfiguration();
$config->registerNumericFunction('FLOOR', 'MyProject\Query\MysqlFloor');

$dql = "SELECT FLOOR(person.salary * 1.75) FROM CompanyPerson person";

Querying Inherited Classes¶

This section demonstrates how you can query inherited classes and what type of results to expect.

Single Table¶

Single Table Inheritance is an inheritance mapping strategy where all classes of a hierarchy are mapped to a single database table. In order to distinguish which row represents which type in the hierarchy a so-called discriminator column is used.

First we need to setup an example set of entities to use. In this scenario it is a generic Person and Employee example:

<?php
namespace Entities;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("SINGLE_TABLE")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer")
     * @GeneratedValue
     */
    protected $id;

    /**
     * @Column(type="string", length=50)
     */
    protected $name;

    // ...
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Employee extends Person
{
    /**
     * @Column(type="string", length=50)
     */
    private $department;

    // ...
}

First notice that the generated SQL to create the tables for these entities looks like the following:

CREATE TABLE Person (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL,
    name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
    discr VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    department VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
)

Now when persist a new Employee instance it will set the discriminator value for us automatically:

<?php
$employee = new \Entities\Employee();
$employee->setName('test');
$employee->setDepartment('testing');
$em->persist($employee);
$em->flush();

Now lets run a simple query to retrieve the Employee we just created:

SELECT e FROM Entities\Employee e WHERE e.name = 'test'

If we check the generated SQL you will notice it has some special conditions added to ensure that we will only get back Employee entities:

SELECT p0_.id AS id0, p0_.name AS name1, p0_.department AS department2,
       p0_.discr AS discr3 FROM Person p0_
WHERE (p0_.name = ?) AND p0_.discr IN ('employee')

Class Table Inheritance¶

Class Table Inheritance is an inheritance mapping strategy where each class in a hierarchy is mapped to several tables: its own table and the tables of all parent classes. The table of a child class is linked to the table of a parent class through a foreign key constraint. Doctrine 2 implements this strategy through the use of a discriminator column in the topmost table of the hierarchy because this is the easiest way to achieve polymorphic queries with Class Table Inheritance.

The example for class table inheritance is the same as single table, you just need to change the inheritance type from SINGLE_TABLE to JOINED:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

Now take a look at the SQL which is generated to create the table, you’ll notice some differences:

CREATE TABLE Person (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL,
    name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
    discr VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE Employee (
    id INT NOT NULL,
    department VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE Employee ADD FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES Person(id) ON DELETE CASCADE

The data is split between two tables
A foreign key exists between the two tables

Now if were to insert the same Employee as we did in the SINGLE_TABLE example and run the same example query it will generate different SQL joining the Person information automatically for you:

SELECT p0_.id AS id0, p0_.name AS name1, e1_.department AS department2,
       p0_.discr AS discr3
FROM Employee e1_ INNER JOIN Person p0_ ON e1_.id = p0_.id
WHERE p0_.name = ?

The Query class¶

An instance of the Doctrine\ORM\Query class represents a DQL query. You create a Query instance be calling EntityManager#createQuery($dql), passing the DQL query string. Alternatively you can create an empty Query instance and invoke Query#setDql($dql) afterwards. Here are some examples:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager

// example1: passing a DQL string
$q = $em->createQuery('select u from MyProject\Model\User u');

// example2: using setDql
$q = $em->createQuery();
$q->setDql('select u from MyProject\Model\User u');

Query Result Formats¶

The format in which the result of a DQL SELECT query is returned can be influenced by a so-called hydration mode. A hydration mode specifies a particular way in which a SQL result set is transformed. Each hydration mode has its own dedicated method on the Query class. Here they are:

Query#getResult(): Retrieves a collection of objects. The result is either a plain collection of objects (pure) or an array where the objects are nested in the result rows (mixed).
Query#getSingleResult(): Retrieves a single object. If the result contains more than one or no object, an exception is thrown. The pure/mixed distinction does not apply.
Query#getOneOrNullResult(): Retrieve a single object. If no object is found null will be returned.
Query#getArrayResult(): Retrieves an array graph (a nested array) that is largely interchangeable with the object graph generated by Query#getResult() for read-only purposes.

Note

An array graph can differ from the corresponding object graph in certain scenarios due to the difference of the identity semantics between arrays and objects.
Query#getScalarResult(): Retrieves a flat/rectangular result set of scalar values that can contain duplicate data. The pure/mixed distinction does not apply.
Query#getSingleScalarResult(): Retrieves a single scalar value from the result returned by the dbms. If the result contains more than a single scalar value, an exception is thrown. The pure/mixed distinction does not apply.

Instead of using these methods, you can alternatively use the general-purpose method Query#execute(array $params = array(), $hydrationMode = Query::HYDRATE_OBJECT). Using this method you can directly supply the hydration mode as the second parameter via one of the Query constants. In fact, the methods mentioned earlier are just convenient shortcuts for the execute method. For example, the method Query#getResult() internally invokes execute, passing in Query::HYDRATE_OBJECT as the hydration mode.

The use of the methods mentioned earlier is generally preferred as it leads to more concise code.

Pure and Mixed Results¶

The nature of a result returned by a DQL SELECT query retrieved through Query#getResult() or Query#getArrayResult() can be of 2 forms: pure and mixed. In the previous simple examples, you already saw a “pure” query result, with only objects. By default, the result type is pure but as soon as scalar values, such as aggregate values or other scalar values that do not belong to an entity, appear in the SELECT part of the DQL query, the result becomes mixed. A mixed result has a different structure than a pure result in order to accommodate for the scalar values.

A pure result usually looks like this:

$dql = "SELECT u FROM User u";

array
    [0] => Object
    [1] => Object
    [2] => Object
    ...

A mixed result on the other hand has the following general structure:

$dql = "SELECT u, 'some scalar string', count(u.groups) AS num FROM User u JOIN u.groups g GROUP BY u.id";

array
    [0]
        [0] => Object
        [1] => "some scalar string"
        ['num'] => 42
        // ... more scalar values, either indexed numerically or with a name
    [1]
        [0] => Object
        [1] => "some scalar string"
        ['num'] => 42
        // ... more scalar values, either indexed numerically or with a name

To better understand mixed results, consider the following DQL query:

SELECT u, UPPER(u.name) nameUpper FROM MyProject\Model\User u

This query makes use of the UPPER DQL function that returns a scalar value and because there is now a scalar value in the SELECT clause, we get a mixed result.

Conventions for mixed results are as follows:

The object fetched in the FROM clause is always positioned with the key ‘0’.
Every scalar without a name is numbered in the order given in the query, starting with 1.
Every aliased scalar is given with its alias-name as the key. The case of the name is kept.
If several objects are fetched from the FROM clause they alternate every row.

Here is how the result could look like:

array
    array
        [0] => User (Object)
        ['nameUpper'] => "ROMAN"
    array
        [0] => User (Object)
        ['nameUpper'] => "JONATHAN"
    ...

And here is how you would access it in PHP code:

<?php
foreach ($results as $row) {
    echo "Name: " . $row[0]->getName();
    echo "Name UPPER: " . $row['nameUpper'];
}

Fetching Multiple FROM Entities¶

If you fetch multiple entities that are listed in the FROM clause then the hydration will return the rows iterating the different top-level entities.

$dql = "SELECT u, g FROM User u, Group g";

array
    [0] => Object (User)
    [1] => Object (Group)
    [2] => Object (User)
    [3] => Object (Group)

Hydration Modes¶

Each of the Hydration Modes makes assumptions about how the result is returned to user land. You should know about all the details to make best use of the different result formats:

The constants for the different hydration modes are:

Query::HYDRATE_OBJECT
Query::HYDRATE_ARRAY
Query::HYDRATE_SCALAR
Query::HYDRATE_SINGLE_SCALAR

Object Hydration¶

Object hydration hydrates the result set into the object graph:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u');
$users = $query->getResult(Query::HYDRATE_OBJECT);

Array Hydration¶

You can run the same query with array hydration and the result set is hydrated into an array that represents the object graph:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u');
$users = $query->getResult(Query::HYDRATE_ARRAY);

You can use the getArrayResult() shortcut as well:

<?php
$users = $query->getArrayResult();

Scalar Hydration¶

If you want to return a flat rectangular result set instead of an object graph you can use scalar hydration:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u');
$users = $query->getResult(Query::HYDRATE_SCALAR);
echo $users[0]['u_id'];

The following assumptions are made about selected fields using Scalar Hydration:

Fields from classes are prefixed by the DQL alias in the result. A query of the kind ‘SELECT u.name ..’ returns a key ‘u_name’ in the result rows.

Single Scalar Hydration¶

If you a query which returns just a single scalar value you can use single scalar hydration:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT COUNT(a.id) FROM CmsUser u LEFT JOIN u.articles a WHERE u.username = ?1 GROUP BY u.id');
$query->setParameter(1, 'jwage');
$numArticles = $query->getResult(Query::HYDRATE_SINGLE_SCALAR);

You can use the getSingleScalarResult() shortcut as well:

<?php
$numArticles = $query->getSingleScalarResult();

Custom Hydration Modes¶

You can easily add your own custom hydration modes by first creating a class which extends AbstractHydrator:

<?php
namespace MyProject\Hydrators;

use Doctrine\ORM\Internal\Hydration\AbstractHydrator;

class CustomHydrator extends AbstractHydrator
{
    protected function _hydrateAll()
    {
        return $this->_stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    }
}

Next you just need to add the class to the ORM configuration:

<?php
$em->getConfiguration()->addCustomHydrationMode('CustomHydrator', 'MyProject\Hydrators\CustomHydrator');

Now the hydrator is ready to be used in your queries:

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('SELECT u FROM CmsUser u');
$results = $query->getResult('CustomHydrator');

Iterating Large Result Sets¶

There are situations when a query you want to execute returns a very large result-set that needs to be processed. All the previously described hydration modes completely load a result-set into memory which might not be feasible with large result sets. See the Batch Processing section on details how to iterate large result sets.

Functions¶

The following methods exist on the AbstractQuery which both Query and NativeQuery extend from.

Parameters¶

Prepared Statements that use numerical or named wildcards require additional parameters to be executable against the database. To pass parameters to the query the following methods can be used:

AbstractQuery::setParameter($param, $value) - Set the numerical or named wildcard to the given value.
AbstractQuery::setParameters(array $params) - Set an array of parameter key-value pairs.
AbstractQuery::getParameter($param)
AbstractQuery::getParameters()

Both named and positional parameters are passed to these methods without their ? or : prefix.

Query Hints¶

You can pass hints to the query parser and hydrators by using the AbstractQuery::setHint($name, $value) method. Currently there exist mostly internal query hints that are not be consumed in userland. However the following few hints are to be used in userland:

Query::HINT_FORCE_PARTIAL_LOAD - Allows to hydrate objects although not all their columns are fetched. This query hint can be used to handle memory consumption problems with large result-sets that contain char or binary data. Doctrine has no way of implicitly reloading this data. Partially loaded objects have to be passed to EntityManager::refresh() if they are to be reloaded fully from the database.
Query::HINT_REFRESH - This query is used internally by EntityManager::refresh() and can be used in userland as well. If you specify this hint and a query returns the data for an entity that is already managed by the UnitOfWork, the fields of the existing entity will be refreshed. In normal operation a result-set that loads data of an already existing entity is discarded in favor of the already existing entity.
Query::HINT_CUSTOM_TREE_WALKERS - An array of additional Doctrine\ORM\Query\TreeWalker instances that are attached to the DQL query parsing process.

Query Cache (DQL Query Only)¶

Parsing a DQL query and converting it into a SQL query against the underlying database platform obviously has some overhead in contrast to directly executing Native SQL queries. That is why there is a dedicated Query Cache for caching the DQL parser results. In combination with the use of wildcards you can reduce the number of parsed queries in production to zero.

The Query Cache Driver is passed from the Doctrine\ORM\Configuration instance to each Doctrine\ORM\Query instance by default and is also enabled by default. This also means you don’t regularly need to fiddle with the parameters of the Query Cache, however if you do there are several methods to interact with it:

Query::setQueryCacheDriver($driver) - Allows to set a Cache instance
Query::setQueryCacheLifeTime($seconds = 3600) - Set lifetime of the query caching.
Query::expireQueryCache($bool) - Enforce the expiring of the query cache if set to true.
Query::getExpireQueryCache()
Query::getQueryCacheDriver()
Query::getQueryCacheLifeTime()

First and Max Result Items (DQL Query Only)¶

You can limit the number of results returned from a DQL query as well as specify the starting offset, Doctrine then uses a strategy of manipulating the select query to return only the requested number of results:

Query::setMaxResults($maxResults)
Query::setFirstResult($offset)

Note

If your query contains a fetch-joined collection specifying the result limit methods are not working as you would expect. Set Max Results restricts the number of database result rows, however in the case of fetch-joined collections one root entity might appear in many rows, effectively hydrating less than the specified number of results.

Temporarily change fetch mode in DQL¶

While normally all your associations are marked as lazy or extra lazy you will have cases where you are using DQL and don’t want to fetch join a second, third or fourth level of entities into your result, because of the increased cost of the SQL JOIN. You can mark a many-to-one or one-to-one association as fetched temporarily to batch fetch these entities using a WHERE .. IN query.

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT u FROM MyProject\User u");
$query->setFetchMode("MyProject\User", "address", "EAGER");
$query->execute();

Given that there are 10 users and corresponding addresses in the database the executed queries will look something like:

SELECT * FROM users;
SELECT * FROM address WHERE id IN (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10);

EBNF¶

The following context-free grammar, written in an EBNF variant, describes the Doctrine Query Language. You can consult this grammar whenever you are unsure about what is possible with DQL or what the correct syntax for a particular query should be.

Document syntax:¶

non-terminals begin with an upper case character
terminals begin with a lower case character
parentheses (...) are used for grouping
square brackets [...] are used for defining an optional part, e.g. zero or one time
curly brackets {...} are used for repetition, e.g. zero or more times
double quotation marks ”...” define a terminal string a vertical bar | represents an alternative

Terminals¶

identifier (name, email, ...)
string (‘foo’, ‘bar’’s house’, ‘%ninja%’, ...)
char (‘/’, ‘\’, ‘ ‘, ...)
integer (-1, 0, 1, 34, ...)
float (-0.23, 0.007, 1.245342E+8, ...)
boolean (false, true)

Query Language¶

QueryLanguage ::= SelectStatement | UpdateStatement | DeleteStatement

Statements¶

SelectStatement ::= SelectClause FromClause [WhereClause] [GroupByClause] [HavingClause] [OrderByClause]
UpdateStatement ::= UpdateClause [WhereClause]
DeleteStatement ::= DeleteClause [WhereClause]

Identifiers¶

/* Alias Identification usage (the "u" of "u.name") */
IdentificationVariable ::= identifier

/* Alias Identification declaration (the "u" of "FROM User u") */
AliasIdentificationVariable :: = identifier

/* identifier that must be a class name (the "User" of "FROM User u") */
AbstractSchemaName ::= identifier

/* identifier that must be a field (the "name" of "u.name") */
/* This is responsible to know if the field exists in Object, no matter if it's a relation or a simple field */
FieldIdentificationVariable ::= identifier

/* identifier that must be a collection-valued association field (to-many) (the "Phonenumbers" of "u.Phonenumbers") */
CollectionValuedAssociationField ::= FieldIdentificationVariable

/* identifier that must be a single-valued association field (to-one) (the "Group" of "u.Group") */
SingleValuedAssociationField ::= FieldIdentificationVariable

/* identifier that must be an embedded class state field (for the future) */
EmbeddedClassStateField ::= FieldIdentificationVariable

/* identifier that must be a simple state field (name, email, ...) (the "name" of "u.name") */
/* The difference between this and FieldIdentificationVariable is only semantical, because it points to a single field (not mapping to a relation) */
SimpleStateField ::= FieldIdentificationVariable

/* Alias ResultVariable declaration (the "total" of "COUNT(*) AS total") */
AliasResultVariable = identifier

/* ResultVariable identifier usage of mapped field aliases (the "total" of "COUNT(*) AS total") */
ResultVariable = identifier

Path Expressions¶

/* "u.Group" or "u.Phonenumbers" declarations */
JoinAssociationPathExpression             ::= IdentificationVariable "." (CollectionValuedAssociationField | SingleValuedAssociationField)

/* "u.Group" or "u.Phonenumbers" usages */
AssociationPathExpression                 ::= CollectionValuedPathExpression | SingleValuedAssociationPathExpression

/* "u.name" or "u.Group" */
SingleValuedPathExpression                ::= StateFieldPathExpression | SingleValuedAssociationPathExpression

/* "u.name" or "u.Group.name" */
StateFieldPathExpression                  ::= IdentificationVariable "." StateField

/* "u.Group" */
SingleValuedAssociationPathExpression     ::= IdentificationVariable "." SingleValuedAssociationField

/* "u.Group.Permissions" */
CollectionValuedPathExpression            ::= IdentificationVariable "." CollectionValuedAssociationField

/* "name" */
StateField                                ::= {EmbeddedClassStateField "."}* SimpleStateField

Clauses¶

SelectClause        ::= "SELECT" ["DISTINCT"] SelectExpression {"," SelectExpression}*
SimpleSelectClause  ::= "SELECT" ["DISTINCT"] SimpleSelectExpression
UpdateClause        ::= "UPDATE" AbstractSchemaName ["AS"] AliasIdentificationVariable "SET" UpdateItem {"," UpdateItem}*
DeleteClause        ::= "DELETE" ["FROM"] AbstractSchemaName ["AS"] AliasIdentificationVariable
FromClause          ::= "FROM" IdentificationVariableDeclaration {"," IdentificationVariableDeclaration}*
SubselectFromClause ::= "FROM" SubselectIdentificationVariableDeclaration {"," SubselectIdentificationVariableDeclaration}*
WhereClause         ::= "WHERE" ConditionalExpression
HavingClause        ::= "HAVING" ConditionalExpression
GroupByClause       ::= "GROUP" "BY" GroupByItem {"," GroupByItem}*
OrderByClause       ::= "ORDER" "BY" OrderByItem {"," OrderByItem}*
Subselect           ::= SimpleSelectClause SubselectFromClause [WhereClause] [GroupByClause] [HavingClause] [OrderByClause]

Items¶

UpdateItem  ::= SingleValuedPathExpression "=" NewValue
OrderByItem ::= (SimpleArithmeticExpression | SingleValuedPathExpression | ScalarExpression | ResultVariable) ["ASC" | "DESC"]
GroupByItem ::= IdentificationVariable | ResultVariable | SingleValuedPathExpression
NewValue    ::= SimpleArithmeticExpression | "NULL"

From, Join and Index by¶

IdentificationVariableDeclaration          ::= RangeVariableDeclaration [IndexBy] {JoinVariableDeclaration}*
SubselectIdentificationVariableDeclaration ::= IdentificationVariableDeclaration | (AssociationPathExpression ["AS"] AliasIdentificationVariable)
JoinVariableDeclaration                    ::= Join [IndexBy]
RangeVariableDeclaration                   ::= AbstractSchemaName ["AS"] AliasIdentificationVariable
Join                                       ::= ["LEFT" ["OUTER"] | "INNER"] "JOIN" JoinAssociationPathExpression ["AS"] AliasIdentificationVariable ["WITH" ConditionalExpression]
IndexBy                                    ::= "INDEX" "BY" StateFieldPathExpression

Select Expressions¶

SelectExpression        ::= (IdentificationVariable | ScalarExpression | AggregateExpression | FunctionDeclaration | PartialObjectExpression | "(" Subselect ")" | CaseExpression) [["AS"] ["HIDDEN"] AliasResultVariable]
SimpleSelectExpression  ::= (StateFieldPathExpression | IdentificationVariable | FunctionDeclaration | AggregateExpression | "(" Subselect ")" | ScalarExpression) [["AS"] AliasResultVariable]
PartialObjectExpression ::= "PARTIAL" IdentificationVariable "." PartialFieldSet
PartialFieldSet         ::= "{" SimpleStateField {"," SimpleStateField}* "}"

Conditional Expressions¶

ConditionalExpression       ::= ConditionalTerm {"OR" ConditionalTerm}*
ConditionalTerm             ::= ConditionalFactor {"AND" ConditionalFactor}*
ConditionalFactor           ::= ["NOT"] ConditionalPrimary
ConditionalPrimary          ::= SimpleConditionalExpression | "(" ConditionalExpression ")"
SimpleConditionalExpression ::= ComparisonExpression | BetweenExpression | LikeExpression |
                                InExpression | NullComparisonExpression | ExistsExpression |
                                EmptyCollectionComparisonExpression | CollectionMemberExpression |
                                InstanceOfExpression

Collection Expressions¶

EmptyCollectionComparisonExpression ::= CollectionValuedPathExpression "IS" ["NOT"] "EMPTY"
CollectionMemberExpression          ::= EntityExpression ["NOT"] "MEMBER" ["OF"] CollectionValuedPathExpression

Literal Values¶

Literal     ::= string | char | integer | float | boolean
InParameter ::= Literal | InputParameter

Input Parameter¶

InputParameter      ::= PositionalParameter | NamedParameter
PositionalParameter ::= "?" integer
NamedParameter      ::= ":" string

Arithmetic Expressions¶

ArithmeticExpression       ::= SimpleArithmeticExpression | "(" Subselect ")"
SimpleArithmeticExpression ::= ArithmeticTerm {("+" | "-") ArithmeticTerm}*
ArithmeticTerm             ::= ArithmeticFactor {("*" | "/") ArithmeticFactor}*
ArithmeticFactor           ::= [("+" | "-")] ArithmeticPrimary
ArithmeticPrimary          ::= SingleValuedPathExpression | Literal | "(" SimpleArithmeticExpression ")"
                               | FunctionsReturningNumerics | AggregateExpression | FunctionsReturningStrings
                               | FunctionsReturningDatetime | IdentificationVariable | ResultVariable
                               | InputParameter | CaseExpression

Scalar and Type Expressions¶

ScalarExpression       ::= SimpleArithmeticExpression | StringPrimary | DateTimePrimary | StateFieldPathExpression | BooleanPrimary | CaseExpression | InstanceOfExpression
StringExpression       ::= StringPrimary | "(" Subselect ")"
StringPrimary          ::= StateFieldPathExpression | string | InputParameter | FunctionsReturningStrings | AggregateExpression | CaseExpression
BooleanExpression      ::= BooleanPrimary | "(" Subselect ")"
BooleanPrimary         ::= StateFieldPathExpression | boolean | InputParameter
EntityExpression       ::= SingleValuedAssociationPathExpression | SimpleEntityExpression
SimpleEntityExpression ::= IdentificationVariable | InputParameter
DatetimeExpression     ::= DatetimePrimary | "(" Subselect ")"
DatetimePrimary        ::= StateFieldPathExpression | InputParameter | FunctionsReturningDatetime | AggregateExpression

Note

Parts of CASE expressions are not yet implemented.

Aggregate Expressions¶

AggregateExpression ::= ("AVG" | "MAX" | "MIN" | "SUM") "(" ["DISTINCT"] StateFieldPathExpression ")" |
                        "COUNT" "(" ["DISTINCT"] (IdentificationVariable | SingleValuedPathExpression) ")"

Case Expressions¶

CaseExpression        ::= GeneralCaseExpression | SimpleCaseExpression | CoalesceExpression | NullifExpression
GeneralCaseExpression ::= "CASE" WhenClause {WhenClause}* "ELSE" ScalarExpression "END"
WhenClause            ::= "WHEN" ConditionalExpression "THEN" ScalarExpression
SimpleCaseExpression  ::= "CASE" CaseOperand SimpleWhenClause {SimpleWhenClause}* "ELSE" ScalarExpression "END"
CaseOperand           ::= StateFieldPathExpression | TypeDiscriminator
SimpleWhenClause      ::= "WHEN" ScalarExpression "THEN" ScalarExpression
CoalesceExpression    ::= "COALESCE" "(" ScalarExpression {"," ScalarExpression}* ")"
NullifExpression      ::= "NULLIF" "(" ScalarExpression "," ScalarExpression ")"

Other Expressions¶

QUANTIFIED/BETWEEN/COMPARISON/LIKE/NULL/EXISTS

QuantifiedExpression     ::= ("ALL" | "ANY" | "SOME") "(" Subselect ")"
BetweenExpression        ::= ArithmeticExpression ["NOT"] "BETWEEN" ArithmeticExpression "AND" ArithmeticExpression
ComparisonExpression     ::= ArithmeticExpression ComparisonOperator ( QuantifiedExpression | ArithmeticExpression )
InExpression             ::= SingleValuedPathExpression ["NOT"] "IN" "(" (InParameter {"," InParameter}* | Subselect) ")"
InstanceOfExpression     ::= IdentificationVariable ["NOT"] "INSTANCE" ["OF"] (InstanceOfParameter | "(" InstanceOfParameter {"," InstanceOfParameter}* ")")
InstanceOfParameter      ::= AbstractSchemaName | InputParameter
LikeExpression           ::= StringExpression ["NOT"] "LIKE" StringPrimary ["ESCAPE" char]
NullComparisonExpression ::= (SingleValuedPathExpression | InputParameter) "IS" ["NOT"] "NULL"
ExistsExpression         ::= ["NOT"] "EXISTS" "(" Subselect ")"
ComparisonOperator       ::= "=" | "<" | "<=" | "<>" | ">" | ">=" | "!="

Functions¶

FunctionDeclaration ::= FunctionsReturningStrings | FunctionsReturningNumerics | FunctionsReturningDateTime

FunctionsReturningNumerics ::=
        "LENGTH" "(" StringPrimary ")" |
        "LOCATE" "(" StringPrimary "," StringPrimary ["," SimpleArithmeticExpression]")" |
        "ABS" "(" SimpleArithmeticExpression ")" |
        "SQRT" "(" SimpleArithmeticExpression ")" |
        "MOD" "(" SimpleArithmeticExpression "," SimpleArithmeticExpression ")" |
        "SIZE" "(" CollectionValuedPathExpression ")" |
        "DATE_DIFF" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary ")" |
        "BIT_AND" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary ")" |
        "BIT_OR" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary ")"

FunctionsReturningDateTime ::=
        "CURRENT_DATE" |
        "CURRENT_TIME" |
        "CURRENT_TIMESTAMP" |
        "DATE_ADD" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary "," StringPrimary ")" |
        "DATE_SUB" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary "," StringPrimary ")"

FunctionsReturningStrings ::=
        "CONCAT" "(" StringPrimary "," StringPrimary ")" |
        "SUBSTRING" "(" StringPrimary "," SimpleArithmeticExpression "," SimpleArithmeticExpression ")" |
        "TRIM" "(" [["LEADING" | "TRAILING" | "BOTH"] [char] "FROM"] StringPrimary ")" |
        "LOWER" "(" StringPrimary ")" |
        "UPPER" "(" StringPrimary ")" |
        "IDENTITY" "(" SingleValuedAssociationPathExpression ")"

The QueryBuilder¶

A QueryBuilder provides an API that is designed for conditionally constructing a DQL query in several steps.

It provides a set of classes and methods that is able to programmatically build queries, and also provides a fluent API. This means that you can change between one methodology to the other as you want, and also pick one if you prefer.

Constructing a new QueryBuilder object¶

The same way you build a normal Query, you build a QueryBuilder object, just providing the correct method name. Here is an example how to build a QueryBuilder object:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager

// example1: creating a QueryBuilder instance
$qb = $em->createQueryBuilder();

Once you have created an instance of QueryBuilder, it provides a set of useful informative functions that you can use. One good example is to inspect what type of object the QueryBuilder is.

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// example2: retrieving type of QueryBuilder
echo $qb->getType(); // Prints: 0

There’re currently 3 possible return values for getType():

QueryBuilder::SELECT, which returns value 0
QueryBuilder::DELETE, returning value 1
QueryBuilder::UPDATE, which returns value 2

It is possible to retrieve the associated EntityManager of the current QueryBuilder, its DQL and also a Query object when you finish building your DQL.

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// example3: retrieve the associated EntityManager
$em = $qb->getEntityManager();

// example4: retrieve the DQL string of what was defined in QueryBuilder
$dql = $qb->getDql();

// example5: retrieve the associated Query object with the processed DQL
$q = $qb->getQuery();

Internally, QueryBuilder works with a DQL cache to increase performance. Any changes that may affect the generated DQL actually modifies the state of QueryBuilder to a stage we call STATE_DIRTY. One QueryBuilder can be in two different states:

QueryBuilder::STATE_CLEAN, which means DQL haven’t been altered since last retrieval or nothing were added since its instantiation
QueryBuilder::STATE_DIRTY, means DQL query must (and will) be processed on next retrieval

Working with QueryBuilder¶

High level API methods¶

To simplify even more the way you build a query in Doctrine, we can take advantage of what we call Helper methods. For all base code, there is a set of useful methods to simplify a programmer’s life. To illustrate how to work with them, here is the same example 6 re-written using QueryBuilder helper methods:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

$qb->select('u')
   ->from('User', 'u')
   ->where('u.id = ?1')
   ->orderBy('u.name', 'ASC');

QueryBuilder helper methods are considered the standard way to build DQL queries. Although it is supported, it should be avoided to use string based queries and greatly encouraged to use $qb->expr()->* methods. Here is a converted example 8 to suggested standard way to build queries:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

$qb->select(array('u')) // string 'u' is converted to array internally
   ->from('User', 'u')
   ->where($qb->expr()->orX(
       $qb->expr()->eq('u.id', '?1'),
       $qb->expr()->like('u.nickname', '?2')
   ))
   ->orderBy('u.surname', 'ASC'));

Here is a complete list of helper methods available in QueryBuilder:

<?php
class QueryBuilder
{
    // Example - $qb->select('u')
    // Example - $qb->select(array('u', 'p'))
    // Example - $qb->select($qb->expr()->select('u', 'p'))
    public function select($select = null);

    // Example - $qb->delete('User', 'u')
    public function delete($delete = null, $alias = null);

    // Example - $qb->update('Group', 'g')
    public function update($update = null, $alias = null);

    // Example - $qb->set('u.firstName', $qb->expr()->literal('Arnold'))
    // Example - $qb->set('u.numChilds', 'u.numChilds + ?1')
    // Example - $qb->set('u.numChilds', $qb->expr()->sum('u.numChilds', '?1'))
    public function set($key, $value);

    // Example - $qb->from('Phonenumber', 'p')
    public function from($from, $alias = null);

    // Example - $qb->innerJoin('u.Group', 'g', Expr\Join::WITH, $qb->expr()->eq('u.status_id', '?1'))
    // Example - $qb->innerJoin('u.Group', 'g', 'WITH', 'u.status = ?1')
    public function innerJoin($join, $alias = null, $conditionType = null, $condition = null);

    // Example - $qb->leftJoin('u.Phonenumbers', 'p', Expr\Join::WITH, $qb->expr()->eq('p.area_code', 55))
    // Example - $qb->leftJoin('u.Phonenumbers', 'p', 'WITH', 'p.area_code = 55')
    public function leftJoin($join, $alias = null, $conditionType = null, $condition = null);

    // NOTE: ->where() overrides all previously set conditions
    //
    // Example - $qb->where('u.firstName = ?1', $qb->expr()->eq('u.surname', '?2'))
    // Example - $qb->where($qb->expr()->andX($qb->expr()->eq('u.firstName', '?1'), $qb->expr()->eq('u.surname', '?2')))
    // Example - $qb->where('u.firstName = ?1 AND u.surname = ?2')
    public function where($where);

    // Example - $qb->andWhere($qb->expr()->orX($qb->expr()->lte('u.age', 40), 'u.numChild = 0'))
    public function andWhere($where);

    // Example - $qb->orWhere($qb->expr()->between('u.id', 1, 10));
    public function orWhere($where);

    // NOTE: -> groupBy() overrides all previously set grouping conditions
    //
    // Example - $qb->groupBy('u.id')
    public function groupBy($groupBy);

    // Example - $qb->addGroupBy('g.name')
    public function addGroupBy($groupBy);

    // NOTE: -> having() overrides all previously set having conditions
    //
    // Example - $qb->having('u.salary >= ?1')
    // Example - $qb->having($qb->expr()->gte('u.salary', '?1'))
    public function having($having);

    // Example - $qb->andHaving($qb->expr()->gt($qb->expr()->count('u.numChild'), 0))
    public function andHaving($having);

    // Example - $qb->orHaving($qb->expr()->lte('g.managerLevel', '100'))
    public function orHaving($having);

    // NOTE: -> orderBy() overrides all previously set ordering conditions
    //
    // Example - $qb->orderBy('u.surname', 'DESC')
    public function orderBy($sort, $order = null);

    // Example - $qb->addOrderBy('u.firstName')
    public function addOrderBy($sort, $order = null); // Default $order = 'ASC'
}

Binding parameters to your query¶

Doctrine supports dynamic binding of parameters to your query, similar to preparing queries. You can use both strings and numbers as placeholders, although both have a slightly different syntax. Additionally, you must make your choice: Mixing both styles is not allowed. Binding parameters can simply be achieved as follows:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

$qb->select('u')
   ->from('User u')
   ->where('u.id = ?1')
   ->orderBy('u.name', 'ASC');
   ->setParameter(1, 100); // Sets ?1 to 100, and thus we will fetch a user with u.id = 100

You are not forced to enumerate your placeholders as the alternative syntax is available:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

$qb->select('u')
   ->from('User u')
   ->where('u.id = :identifier')
   ->orderBy('u.name', 'ASC');
   ->setParameter('identifier', 100); // Sets :identifier to 100, and thus we will fetch a user with u.id = 100

Note that numeric placeholders start with a ? followed by a number while the named placeholders start with a : followed by a string.

Calling setParameter() automatically infers which type you are setting as value. This works for integers, arrays of strings/integers, DateTime instances and for managed entities. If you want to set a type explicitly you can call the third argument to setParameter() explicitly. It accepts either a PDO type or a DBAL Type name for conversion.

If you’ve got several parameters to bind to your query, you can also use setParameters() instead of setParameter() with the following syntax:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// Query here...
$qb->setParameters(array(1 => 'value for ?1', 2 => 'value for ?2'));

Getting already bound parameters is easy - simply use the above mentioned syntax with “getParameter()” or “getParameters()”:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// See example above
$params = $qb->getParameters();
// $params instanceof \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection

// Equivalent to
$param = $qb->getParameter(1);
// $param instanceof \Doctrine\ORM\Query\Parameter

Note: If you try to get a parameter that was not bound yet, getParameter() simply returns NULL.

The API of a Query Parameter is:

namespace Doctrine\ORM\Query;

class Parameter
{
    public function getName();
    public function getValue();
    public function getType();
    public function setValue($value, $type = null);
}

Limiting the Result¶

To limit a result the query builder has some methods in common with the Query object which can be retrieved from EntityManager#createQuery().

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder
$offset = (int)$_GET['offset'];
$limit = (int)$_GET['limit'];

$qb->add('select', 'u')
   ->add('from', 'User u')
   ->add('orderBy', 'u.name ASC')
   ->setFirstResult( $offset )
   ->setMaxResults( $limit );

Executing a Query¶

The QueryBuilder is a builder object only, it has no means of actually executing the Query. Additionally a set of parameters such as query hints cannot be set on the QueryBuilder itself. This is why you always have to convert a querybuilder instance into a Query object:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder
$query = $qb->getQuery();

// Set additional Query options
$query->setQueryHint('foo', 'bar');
$query->useResultCache('my_cache_id');

// Execute Query
$result = $query->getResult();
$single = $query->getSingleResult();
$array = $query->getArrayResult();
$scalar = $query->getScalarResult();
$singleScalar = $query->getSingleScalarResult();

The Expr class¶

To workaround some of the issues that add() method may cause, Doctrine created a class that can be considered as a helper for building expressions. This class is called Expr, which provides a set of useful methods to help build expressions:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// example8: QueryBuilder port of: "SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.id = ? OR u.nickname LIKE ? ORDER BY u.surname DESC" using Expr class
$qb->add('select', new Expr\Select(array('u')))
   ->add('from', new Expr\From('User', 'u'))
   ->add('where', $qb->expr()->orX(
       $qb->expr()->eq('u.id', '?1'),
       $qb->expr()->like('u.nickname', '?2')
   ))
   ->add('orderBy', new Expr\OrderBy('u.name', 'ASC'));

Although it still sounds complex, the ability to programmatically create conditions are the main feature of Expr. Here it is a complete list of supported helper methods available:

<?php
class Expr
{
    /** Conditional objects **/

    // Example - $qb->expr()->andX($cond1 [, $condN])->add(...)->...
    public function andX($x = null); // Returns Expr\AndX instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->orX($cond1 [, $condN])->add(...)->...
    public function orX($x = null); // Returns Expr\OrX instance


    /** Comparison objects **/

    // Example - $qb->expr()->eq('u.id', '?1') => u.id = ?1
    public function eq($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->neq('u.id', '?1') => u.id <> ?1
    public function neq($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->lt('u.id', '?1') => u.id < ?1
    public function lt($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->lte('u.id', '?1') => u.id <= ?1
    public function lte($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->gt('u.id', '?1') => u.id > ?1
    public function gt($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->gte('u.id', '?1') => u.id >= ?1
    public function gte($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->isNull('u.id') => u.id IS NULL
    public function isNull($x); // Returns string

    // Example - $qb->expr()->isNotNull('u.id') => u.id IS NOT NULL
    public function isNotNull($x); // Returns string


    /** Arithmetic objects **/

    // Example - $qb->expr()->prod('u.id', '2') => u.id * 2
    public function prod($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Math instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->diff('u.id', '2') => u.id - 2
    public function diff($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Math instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->sum('u.id', '2') => u.id + 2
    public function sum($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Math instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->quot('u.id', '2') => u.id / 2
    public function quot($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Math instance


    /** Pseudo-function objects **/

    // Example - $qb->expr()->exists($qb2->getDql())
    public function exists($subquery); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->all($qb2->getDql())
    public function all($subquery); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->some($qb2->getDql())
    public function some($subquery); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->any($qb2->getDql())
    public function any($subquery); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->not($qb->expr()->eq('u.id', '?1'))
    public function not($restriction); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->in('u.id', array(1, 2, 3))
    // Make sure that you do NOT use something similar to $qb->expr()->in('value', array('stringvalue')) as this will cause Doctrine to throw an Exception.
    // Instead, use $qb->expr()->in('value', array('?1')) and bind your parameter to ?1 (see section above)
    public function in($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->notIn('u.id', '2')
    public function notIn($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Func instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->like('u.firstname', $qb->expr()->literal('Gui%'))
    public function like($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Comparison instance

    // Example - $qb->expr()->between('u.id', '1', '10')
    public function between($val, $x, $y); // Returns Expr\Func


    /** Function objects **/

    // Example - $qb->expr()->trim('u.firstname')
    public function trim($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->concat('u.firstname', $qb->expr()->concat($qb->expr()->literal(' '), 'u.lastname'))
    public function concat($x, $y); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->substr('u.firstname', 0, 1)
    public function substr($x, $from, $len); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->lower('u.firstname')
    public function lower($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->upper('u.firstname')
    public function upper($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->length('u.firstname')
    public function length($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->avg('u.age')
    public function avg($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->max('u.age')
    public function max($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->min('u.age')
    public function min($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->abs('u.currentBalance')
    public function abs($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->sqrt('u.currentBalance')
    public function sqrt($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->count('u.firstname')
    public function count($x); // Returns Expr\Func

    // Example - $qb->expr()->countDistinct('u.surname')
    public function countDistinct($x); // Returns Expr\Func
}

Low Level API¶

Now we have describe the low level (thought of as the hardcore method) of creating queries. It may be useful to work at this level for optimization purposes, but most of the time it is preferred to work at a higher level of abstraction.

All helper methods in QueryBuilder actually rely on a single one: add(). This method is responsible of building every piece of DQL. It takes 3 parameters: $dqlPartName, $dqlPart and $append (default=false)

$dqlPartName: Where the $dqlPart should be placed. Possible values: select, from, where, groupBy, having, orderBy
$dqlPart: What should be placed in $dqlPartName. Accepts a string or any instance of Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr\*
$append: Optional flag (default=false) if the $dqlPart should override all previously defined items in $dqlPartName or not (no effect on the where and having DQL query parts, which always override all previously defined items)

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// example6: how to define: "SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.id = ? ORDER BY u.name ASC" using QueryBuilder string support
$qb->add('select', 'u')
   ->add('from', 'User u')
   ->add('where', 'u.id = ?1')
   ->add('orderBy', 'u.name ASC');

Expr* classes¶

When you call add() with string, it internally evaluates to an instance of Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr\Expr\* class. Here is the same query of example 6 written using Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr\Expr\* classes:

<?php
// $qb instanceof QueryBuilder

// example7: how to define: "SELECT u FROM User u WHERE u.id = ? ORDER BY u.name ASC" using QueryBuilder using Expr\* instances
$qb->add('select', new Expr\Select(array('u')))
   ->add('from', new Expr\From('User', 'u'))
   ->add('where', new Expr\Comparison('u.id', '=', '?1'))
   ->add('orderBy', new Expr\OrderBy('u.name', 'ASC'));

Of course this is the hardest way to build a DQL query in Doctrine. To simplify some of these efforts, we introduce what we call as Expr helper class.

Native SQL¶

With NativeQuery you can execute native SELECT SQL statements and map the results to Doctrine entities or any other result format supported by Doctrine.

In order to make this mapping possible, you need to describe to Doctrine what columns in the result map to which entity property. This description is represented by a ResultSetMapping object.

With this feature you can map arbitrary SQL code to objects, such as highly vendor-optimized SQL or stored-procedures.

Writing ResultSetMapping from scratch is complex, but there is a convenience wrapper around it called a ResultSetMappingBuilder. It can generate the mappings for you based on Entities and even generates the SELECT clause based on this information for you.

Note

If you want to execute DELETE, UPDATE or INSERT statements the Native SQL API cannot be used and will probably throw errors. Use EntityManager#getConnection() to access the native database connection and call the executeUpdate() method for these queries.

The NativeQuery class¶

To create a NativeQuery you use the method EntityManager#createNativeQuery($sql, $resultSetMapping). As you can see in the signature of this method, it expects 2 ingredients: The SQL you want to execute and the ResultSetMapping that describes how the results will be mapped.

Once you obtained an instance of a NativeQuery, you can bind parameters to it with the same API that Query has and execute it.

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Query\ResultSetMapping;

$rsm = new ResultSetMapping();
// build rsm here

$query = $entityManager->createNativeQuery('SELECT id, name, discr FROM users WHERE name = ?', $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, 'romanb');

$users = $query->getResult();

ResultSetMappingBuilder¶

An easy start into ResultSet mapping is the ResultSetMappingBuilder object. This has several benefits:

The builder takes care of automatically updating your ResultSetMapping when the fields or associations change on the metadata of an entity.
You can generate the required SELECT expression for a builder by converting it to a string.
The API is much simpler than the usual ResultSetMapping API.

One downside is that the builder API does not yet support entities with inheritance hierachies.

<?php

use Doctrine\ORM\Query\ResultSetMappingBuilder;

$sql = "SELECT u.id, u.name, a.id AS address_id, a.street, a.city " .
       "FROM users u INNER JOIN address a ON u.address_id = a.id";

$rsm = new ResultSetMappingBuilder($entityManager);
$rsm->addRootEntityFromClassMetadata('MyProject\User', 'u');
$rsm->addJoinedEntityFromClassMetadata('MyProject\Address', 'a', 'u', 'address', array('id' => 'address_id'));

The builder extends the ResultSetMapping class and as such has all the functionality of it as well.

..versionadded:: 2.4

Starting with Doctrine ORM 2.4 you can generate the SELECT clause from a ResultSetMappingBuilder. You can either cast the builder object to (string) and the DQL aliases are used as SQL table aliases or use the generateSelectClause($tableAliases) method and pass a mapping from DQL alias (key) to SQL alias (value)

<?php

$selectClause = $builder->generateSelectClause(array(
    'u' => 't1',
    'g' => 't2'
));
$sql = "SELECT " . $selectClause . " FROM users t1 JOIN groups t2 ON t1.group_id = t2.id";

The ResultSetMapping¶

Understanding the ResultSetMapping is the key to using a NativeQuery. A Doctrine result can contain the following components:

Entity results. These represent root result elements.
Joined entity results. These represent joined entities in associations of root entity results.
Field results. These represent a column in the result set that maps to a field of an entity. A field result always belongs to an entity result or joined entity result.
Scalar results. These represent scalar values in the result set that will appear in each result row. Adding scalar results to a ResultSetMapping can also cause the overall result to become mixed (see DQL - Doctrine Query Language) if the same ResultSetMapping also contains entity results.
Meta results. These represent columns that contain meta-information, such as foreign keys and discriminator columns. When querying for objects (getResult()), all meta columns of root entities or joined entities must be present in the SQL query and mapped accordingly using ResultSetMapping#addMetaResult.

Note

It might not surprise you that Doctrine uses ResultSetMapping internally when you create DQL queries. As the query gets parsed and transformed to SQL, Doctrine fills a ResultSetMapping that describes how the results should be processed by the hydration routines.

We will now look at each of the result types that can appear in a ResultSetMapping in detail.

Entity results¶

An entity result describes an entity type that appears as a root element in the transformed result. You add an entity result through ResultSetMapping#addEntityResult(). Let’s take a look at the method signature in detail:

<?php
/**
 * Adds an entity result to this ResultSetMapping.
 *
 * @param string $class The class name of the entity.
 * @param string $alias The alias for the class. The alias must be unique among all entity
 *                      results or joined entity results within this ResultSetMapping.
 */
public function addEntityResult($class, $alias)

The first parameter is the fully qualified name of the entity class. The second parameter is some arbitrary alias for this entity result that must be unique within a ResultSetMapping. You use this alias to attach field results to the entity result. It is very similar to an identification variable that you use in DQL to alias classes or relationships.

An entity result alone is not enough to form a valid ResultSetMapping. An entity result or joined entity result always needs a set of field results, which we will look at soon.

Joined entity results¶

A joined entity result describes an entity type that appears as a joined relationship element in the transformed result, attached to a (root) entity result. You add a joined entity result through ResultSetMapping#addJoinedEntityResult(). Let’s take a look at the method signature in detail:

<?php
/**
 * Adds a joined entity result.
 *
 * @param string $class The class name of the joined entity.
 * @param string $alias The unique alias to use for the joined entity.
 * @param string $parentAlias The alias of the entity result that is the parent of this joined result.
 * @param object $relation The association field that connects the parent entity result with the joined entity result.
 */
public function addJoinedEntityResult($class, $alias, $parentAlias, $relation)

The first parameter is the class name of the joined entity. The second parameter is an arbitrary alias for the joined entity that must be unique within the ResultSetMapping. You use this alias to attach field results to the entity result. The third parameter is the alias of the entity result that is the parent type of the joined relationship. The fourth and last parameter is the name of the field on the parent entity result that should contain the joined entity result.

Field results¶

A field result describes the mapping of a single column in a SQL result set to a field in an entity. As such, field results are inherently bound to entity results. You add a field result through ResultSetMapping#addFieldResult(). Again, let’s examine the method signature in detail:

<?php
/**
 * Adds a field result that is part of an entity result or joined entity result.
 *
 * @param string $alias The alias of the entity result or joined entity result.
 * @param string $columnName The name of the column in the SQL result set.
 * @param string $fieldName The name of the field on the (joined) entity.
 */
public function addFieldResult($alias, $columnName, $fieldName)

The first parameter is the alias of the entity result to which the field result will belong. The second parameter is the name of the column in the SQL result set. Note that this name is case sensitive, i.e. if you use a native query against Oracle it must be all uppercase. The third parameter is the name of the field on the entity result identified by $alias into which the value of the column should be set.

Scalar results¶

A scalar result describes the mapping of a single column in a SQL result set to a scalar value in the Doctrine result. Scalar results are typically used for aggregate values but any column in the SQL result set can be mapped as a scalar value. To add a scalar result use ResultSetMapping#addScalarResult(). The method signature in detail:

<?php
/**
 * Adds a scalar result mapping.
 *
 * @param string $columnName The name of the column in the SQL result set.
 * @param string $alias The result alias with which the scalar result should be placed in the result structure.
 */
public function addScalarResult($columnName, $alias)

The first parameter is the name of the column in the SQL result set and the second parameter is the result alias under which the value of the column will be placed in the transformed Doctrine result.

Meta results¶

A meta result describes a single column in a SQL result set that is either a foreign key or a discriminator column. These columns are essential for Doctrine to properly construct objects out of SQL result sets. To add a column as a meta result use ResultSetMapping#addMetaResult(). The method signature in detail:

<?php
/**
 * Adds a meta column (foreign key or discriminator column) to the result set.
 *
 * @param string  $alias
 * @param string  $columnAlias
 * @param string  $columnName
 * @param boolean $isIdentifierColumn
 */
public function addMetaResult($alias, $columnAlias, $columnName, $isIdentifierColumn = false)

The first parameter is the alias of the entity result to which the meta column belongs. A meta result column (foreign key or discriminator column) always belongs to an entity result. The second parameter is the column alias/name of the column in the SQL result set and the third parameter is the column name used in the mapping. The fourth parameter should be set to true in case the primary key of the entity is the foreign key you’re adding.

Discriminator Column¶

When joining an inheritance tree you have to give Doctrine a hint which meta-column is the discriminator column of this tree.

<?php
/**
 * Sets a discriminator column for an entity result or joined entity result.
 * The discriminator column will be used to determine the concrete class name to
 * instantiate.
 *
 * @param string $alias The alias of the entity result or joined entity result the discriminator
 *                      column should be used for.
 * @param string $discrColumn The name of the discriminator column in the SQL result set.
 */
public function setDiscriminatorColumn($alias, $discrColumn)

Examples¶

Understanding a ResultSetMapping is probably easiest through looking at some examples.

First a basic example that describes the mapping of a single entity.

<?php
// Equivalent DQL query: "select u from User u where u.name=?1"
// User owns no associations.
$rsm = new ResultSetMapping;
$rsm->addEntityResult('User', 'u');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'id', 'id');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'name', 'name');

$query = $this->_em->createNativeQuery('SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE name = ?', $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, 'romanb');

$users = $query->getResult();

The result would look like this:

array(
    [0] => User (Object)
)

Note that this would be a partial object if the entity has more fields than just id and name. In the example above the column and field names are identical but that is not necessary, of course. Also note that the query string passed to createNativeQuery is real native SQL. Doctrine does not touch this SQL in any way.

In the previous basic example, a User had no relations and the table the class is mapped to owns no foreign keys. The next example assumes User has a unidirectional or bidirectional one-to-one association to a CmsAddress, where the User is the owning side and thus owns the foreign key.

<?php
// Equivalent DQL query: "select u from User u where u.name=?1"
// User owns an association to an Address but the Address is not loaded in the query.
$rsm = new ResultSetMapping;
$rsm->addEntityResult('User', 'u');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'id', 'id');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'name', 'name');
$rsm->addMetaResult('u', 'address_id', 'address_id');

$query = $this->_em->createNativeQuery('SELECT id, name, address_id FROM users WHERE name = ?', $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, 'romanb');

$users = $query->getResult();

Foreign keys are used by Doctrine for lazy-loading purposes when querying for objects. In the previous example, each user object in the result will have a proxy (a “ghost”) in place of the address that contains the address_id. When the ghost proxy is accessed, it loads itself based on this key.

Consequently, associations that are fetch-joined do not require the foreign keys to be present in the SQL result set, only associations that are lazy.

<?php
// Equivalent DQL query: "select u from User u join u.address a WHERE u.name = ?1"
// User owns association to an Address and the Address is loaded in the query.
$rsm = new ResultSetMapping;
$rsm->addEntityResult('User', 'u');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'id', 'id');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'name', 'name');
$rsm->addJoinedEntityResult('Address' , 'a', 'u', 'address');
$rsm->addFieldResult('a', 'address_id', 'id');
$rsm->addFieldResult('a', 'street', 'street');
$rsm->addFieldResult('a', 'city', 'city');

$sql = 'SELECT u.id, u.name, a.id AS address_id, a.street, a.city FROM users u ' .
       'INNER JOIN address a ON u.address_id = a.id WHERE u.name = ?';
$query = $this->_em->createNativeQuery($sql, $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, 'romanb');

$users = $query->getResult();

In this case the nested entity Address is registered with the ResultSetMapping#addJoinedEntityResult method, which notifies Doctrine that this entity is not hydrated at the root level, but as a joined entity somewhere inside the object graph. In this case we specify the alias ‘u’ as third parameter and address as fourth parameter, which means the Address is hydrated into the User::$address property.

If a fetched entity is part of a mapped hierarchy that requires a discriminator column, this column must be present in the result set as a meta column so that Doctrine can create the appropriate concrete type. This is shown in the following example where we assume that there are one or more subclasses that extend User and either Class Table Inheritance or Single Table Inheritance is used to map the hierarchy (both use a discriminator column).

<?php
// Equivalent DQL query: "select u from User u where u.name=?1"
// User is a mapped base class for other classes. User owns no associations.
$rsm = new ResultSetMapping;
$rsm->addEntityResult('User', 'u');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'id', 'id');
$rsm->addFieldResult('u', 'name', 'name');
$rsm->addMetaResult('u', 'discr', 'discr'); // discriminator column
$rsm->setDiscriminatorColumn('u', 'discr');

$query = $this->_em->createNativeQuery('SELECT id, name, discr FROM users WHERE name = ?', $rsm);
$query->setParameter(1, 'romanb');

$users = $query->getResult();

Note that in the case of Class Table Inheritance, an example as above would result in partial objects if any objects in the result are actually a subtype of User. When using DQL, Doctrine automatically includes the necessary joins for this mapping strategy but with native SQL it is your responsibility.

Named Native Query¶

You can also map a native query using a named native query mapping.

To achieve that, you must describe the SQL resultset structure using named native query (and sql resultset mappings if is a several resultset mappings).

Like named query, a named native query can be defined at class level or in a XML or YAML file.

A resultSetMapping parameter is defined in @NamedNativeQuery, it represents the name of a defined @SqlResultSetMapping.

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
/**
 * @NamedNativeQueries({
 *      @NamedNativeQuery(
 *          name            = "fetchMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          resultSetMapping= "mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          query           = "SELECT u.id AS u_id, u.name AS u_name, u.status AS u_status, a.id AS a_id, a.zip AS a_zip, a.country AS a_country, COUNT(p.phonenumber) AS numphones FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id INNER JOIN phonenumbers p ON u.id = p.user_id GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.status, u.username, a.id, a.zip, a.country ORDER BY u.username"
 *      ),
 * })
 * @SqlResultSetMappings({
 *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
 *          name    = "mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          entities= {
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "__CLASS__",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id",       column="u_id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "name",     column="u_name"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "status",   column="u_status"),
 *                  }
 *              ),
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "Address",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id",       column="a_id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "zip",      column="a_zip"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "country",  column="a_country"),
 *                  }
 *              )
 *          },
 *          columns = {
 *              @ColumnResult("numphones")
 *          }
 *      )
 *})
 */
 class User
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    public $id;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=50, nullable=true) */
    public $status;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255, unique=true) */
    public $username;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255) */
    public $name;

    /** @OneToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber") */
    public $phonenumbers;

    /** @OneToOne(targetEntity="Address") */
    public $address;

    // ....
}

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\User">
        <named-native-queries>
            <named-native-query name="fetchMultipleJoinsEntityResults" result-set-mapping="mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults">
                <query>SELECT u.id AS u_id, u.name AS u_name, u.status AS u_status, a.id AS a_id, a.zip AS a_zip, a.country AS a_country, COUNT(p.phonenumber) AS numphones FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id INNER JOIN phonenumbers p ON u.id = p.user_id GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.status, u.username, a.id, a.zip, a.country ORDER BY u.username</query>
            </named-native-query>
        </named-native-queries>
        <sql-result-set-mappings>
            <sql-result-set-mapping name="mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults">
                <entity-result entity-class="__CLASS__">
                    <field-result name="id" column="u_id"/>
                    <field-result name="name" column="u_name"/>
                    <field-result name="status" column="u_status"/>
                </entity-result>
                <entity-result entity-class="Address">
                    <field-result name="id" column="a_id"/>
                    <field-result name="zip" column="a_zip"/>
                    <field-result name="country" column="a_country"/>
                </entity-result>
                <column-result name="numphones"/>
            </sql-result-set-mapping>
        </sql-result-set-mappings>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Model\User:
  type: entity
  namedNativeQueries:
    fetchMultipleJoinsEntityResults:
      name: fetchMultipleJoinsEntityResults
      resultSetMapping: mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults
      query: SELECT u.id AS u_id, u.name AS u_name, u.status AS u_status, a.id AS a_id, a.zip AS a_zip, a.country AS a_country, COUNT(p.phonenumber) AS numphones FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id INNER JOIN phonenumbers p ON u.id = p.user_id GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.status, u.username, a.id, a.zip, a.country ORDER BY u.username
  sqlResultSetMappings:
    mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults:
      name: mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults
      columnResult:
        0:
          name: numphones
      entityResult:
        0:
          entityClass: __CLASS__
          fieldResult:
            0:
              name: id
              column: u_id
            1:
              name: name
              column: u_name
            2:
              name: status
              column: u_status
        1:
          entityClass: Address
          fieldResult:
            0:
              name: id
              column: a_id
            1:
              name: zip
              column: a_zip
            2:
              name: country
              column: a_country

Things to note:

The resultset mapping declares the entities retrieved by this native query.
Each field of the entity is bound to a SQL alias (or column name).
All fields of the entity including the ones of subclasses and the foreign key columns of related entities have to be present in the SQL query.
Field definitions are optional provided that they map to the same column name as the one declared on the class property.
__CLASS__ is an alias for the mapped class

In the above example, the fetchJoinedAddress named query use the joinMapping result set mapping. This mapping returns 2 entities, User and Address, each property is declared and associated to a column name, actually the column name retrieved by the query.

Let’s now see an implicit declaration of the property / column.

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
    /**
     * @NamedNativeQueries({
     *      @NamedNativeQuery(
     *          name                = "findAll",
     *          resultSetMapping    = "mappingFindAll",
     *          query               = "SELECT * FROM addresses"
     *      ),
     * })
     * @SqlResultSetMappings({
     *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
     *          name    = "mappingFindAll",
     *          entities= {
     *              @EntityResult(
     *                  entityClass = "Address"
     *              )
     *          }
     *      )
     * })
     */
   class Address
   {
        /**  @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
        public $id;

        /** @Column() */
        public $country;

        /** @Column() */
        public $zip;

        /** @Column()*/
        public $city;

        // ....
    }

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\Address">
        <named-native-queries>
            <named-native-query name="findAll" result-set-mapping="mappingFindAll">
                <query>SELECT * FROM addresses</query>
            </named-native-query>
        </named-native-queries>
        <sql-result-set-mappings>
            <sql-result-set-mapping name="mappingFindAll">
                <entity-result entity-class="Address"/>
            </sql-result-set-mapping>
        </sql-result-set-mappings>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Model\Address:
  type: entity
  namedNativeQueries:
    findAll:
      resultSetMapping: mappingFindAll
      query: SELECT * FROM addresses
  sqlResultSetMappings:
    mappingFindAll:
      name: mappingFindAll
      entityResult:
        address:
          entityClass: Address

In this example, we only describe the entity member of the result set mapping. The property / column mappings is done using the entity mapping values. In this case the model property is bound to the model_txt column. If the association to a related entity involve a composite primary key, a @FieldResult element should be used for each foreign key column. The @FieldResult name is composed of the property name for the relationship, followed by a dot (”.”), followed by the name or the field or property of the primary key.

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
    /**
     * @NamedNativeQueries({
     *      @NamedNativeQuery(
     *          name            = "fetchJoinedAddress",
     *          resultSetMapping= "mappingJoinedAddress",
     *          query           = "SELECT u.id, u.name, u.status, a.id AS a_id, a.country AS a_country, a.zip AS a_zip, a.city AS a_city FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id WHERE u.username = ?"
     *      ),
     * })
     * @SqlResultSetMappings({
     *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
     *          name    = "mappingJoinedAddress",
     *          entities= {
     *              @EntityResult(
     *                  entityClass = "__CLASS__",
     *                  fields      = {
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "id"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "name"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "status"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.id", column = "a_id"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.zip", column = "a_zip"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.city", column = "a_city"),
     *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.country", column = "a_country"),
     *                  }
     *              )
     *          }
     *      )
     * })
     */
    class User
    {
        /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
        public $id;

        /** @Column(type="string", length=50, nullable=true) */
        public $status;

        /** @Column(type="string", length=255, unique=true) */
        public $username;

        /** @Column(type="string", length=255) */
        public $name;

        /** @OneToOne(targetEntity="Address") */
        public $address;

        // ....
    }

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\User">
        <named-native-queries>
            <named-native-query name="fetchJoinedAddress" result-set-mapping="mappingJoinedAddress">
                <query>SELECT u.id, u.name, u.status, a.id AS a_id, a.country AS a_country, a.zip AS a_zip, a.city AS a_city FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id WHERE u.username = ?</query>
            </named-native-query>
        </named-native-queries>
        <sql-result-set-mappings>
            <sql-result-set-mapping name="mappingJoinedAddress">
                <entity-result entity-class="__CLASS__">
                    <field-result name="id"/>
                    <field-result name="name"/>
                    <field-result name="status"/>
                    <field-result name="address.id" column="a_id"/>
                    <field-result name="address.zip"  column="a_zip"/>
                    <field-result name="address.city"  column="a_city"/>
                    <field-result name="address.country" column="a_country"/>
                </entity-result>
            </sql-result-set-mapping>
        </sql-result-set-mappings>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Model\User:
  type: entity
  namedNativeQueries:
    fetchJoinedAddress:
      name: fetchJoinedAddress
      resultSetMapping: mappingJoinedAddress
      query: SELECT u.id, u.name, u.status, a.id AS a_id, a.country AS a_country, a.zip AS a_zip, a.city AS a_city FROM users u INNER JOIN addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id WHERE u.username = ?
  sqlResultSetMappings:
    mappingJoinedAddress:
      entityResult:
        0:
          entityClass: __CLASS__
          fieldResult:
            0:
              name: id
            1:
              name: name
            2:
              name: status
            3:
              name: address.id
              column: a_id
            4:
              name: address.zip
              column: a_zip
            5:
              name: address.city
              column: a_city
            6:
              name: address.country
              column: a_country

If you retrieve a single entity and if you use the default mapping, you can use the resultClass attribute instead of resultSetMapping:

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
    /**
     * @NamedNativeQueries({
     *      @NamedNativeQuery(
     *          name           = "find-by-id",
     *          resultClass    = "Address",
     *          query          = "SELECT * FROM addresses"
     *      ),
     * })
     */
   class Address
   {
        // ....
   }

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\Address">
        <named-native-queries>
            <named-native-query name="find-by-id" result-class="Address">
                <query>SELECT * FROM addresses WHERE id = ?</query>
            </named-native-query>
        </named-native-queries>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Model\Address:
  type: entity
  namedNativeQueries:
    findAll:
      name: findAll
      resultClass: Address
      query: SELECT * FROM addresses

In some of your native queries, you’ll have to return scalar values, for example when building report queries. You can map them in the @SqlResultsetMapping through @ColumnResult. You actually can even mix, entities and scalar returns in the same native query (this is probably not that common though).

PHP

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
    /**
     * @NamedNativeQueries({
     *      @NamedNativeQuery(
     *          name            = "count",
     *          resultSetMapping= "mappingCount",
     *          query           = "SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM addresses"
     *      )
     * })
     * @SqlResultSetMappings({
     *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
     *          name    = "mappingCount",
     *          columns = {
     *              @ColumnResult(
     *                  name = "count"
     *              )
     *          }
     *      )
     * })
     */
   class Address
   {
        // ....
   }

XML

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\Model\Address">
        <named-native-query name="count" result-set-mapping="mappingCount">
            <query>SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM addresses</query>
        </named-native-query>
        <sql-result-set-mappings>
            <sql-result-set-mapping name="mappingCount">
                <column-result name="count"/>
            </sql-result-set-mapping>
        </sql-result-set-mappings>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML

MyProject\Model\Address:
  type: entity
  namedNativeQueries:
    count:
      name: count
      resultSetMapping: mappingCount
      query: SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM addresses
  sqlResultSetMappings:
    mappingCount:
      name: mappingCount
      columnResult:
        count:
          name: count

Change Tracking Policies¶

Change tracking is the process of determining what has changed in managed entities since the last time they were synchronized with the database.

Doctrine provides 3 different change tracking policies, each having its particular advantages and disadvantages. The change tracking policy can be defined on a per-class basis (or more precisely, per-hierarchy).

Deferred Implicit¶

The deferred implicit policy is the default change tracking policy and the most convenient one. With this policy, Doctrine detects the changes by a property-by-property comparison at commit time and also detects changes to entities or new entities that are referenced by other managed entities (“persistence by reachability”). Although the most convenient policy, it can have negative effects on performance if you are dealing with large units of work (see “Understanding the Unit of Work”). Since Doctrine can’t know what has changed, it needs to check all managed entities for changes every time you invoke EntityManager#flush(), making this operation rather costly.

Deferred Explicit¶

The deferred explicit policy is similar to the deferred implicit policy in that it detects changes through a property-by-property comparison at commit time. The difference is that Doctrine 2 only considers entities that have been explicitly marked for change detection through a call to EntityManager#persist(entity) or through a save cascade. All other entities are skipped. This policy therefore gives improved performance for larger units of work while sacrificing the behavior of “automatic dirty checking”.

Therefore, flush() operations are potentially cheaper with this policy. The negative aspect this has is that if you have a rather large application and you pass your objects through several layers for processing purposes and business tasks you may need to track yourself which entities have changed on the way so you can pass them to EntityManager#persist().

This policy can be configured as follows:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @ChangeTrackingPolicy("DEFERRED_EXPLICIT")
 */
class User
{
    // ...
}

Notify¶

This policy is based on the assumption that the entities notify interested listeners of changes to their properties. For that purpose, a class that wants to use this policy needs to implement the NotifyPropertyChanged interface from the Doctrine namespace. As a guideline, such an implementation can look as follows:

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\NotifyPropertyChanged,
    Doctrine\Common\PropertyChangedListener;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @ChangeTrackingPolicy("NOTIFY")
 */
class MyEntity implements NotifyPropertyChanged
{
    // ...

    private $_listeners = array();

    public function addPropertyChangedListener(PropertyChangedListener $listener)
    {
        $this->_listeners[] = $listener;
    }
}

Then, in each property setter of this class or derived classes, you need to notify all the PropertyChangedListener instances. As an example we add a convenience method on MyEntity that shows this behaviour:

<?php
// ...

class MyEntity implements NotifyPropertyChanged
{
    // ...

    protected function _onPropertyChanged($propName, $oldValue, $newValue)
    {
        if ($this->_listeners) {
            foreach ($this->_listeners as $listener) {
                $listener->propertyChanged($this, $propName, $oldValue, $newValue);
            }
        }
    }

    public function setData($data)
    {
        if ($data != $this->data) {
            $this->_onPropertyChanged('data', $this->data, $data);
            $this->data = $data;
        }
    }
}

You have to invoke _onPropertyChanged inside every method that changes the persistent state of MyEntity.

The check whether the new value is different from the old one is not mandatory but recommended. That way you also have full control over when you consider a property changed.

The negative point of this policy is obvious: You need implement an interface and write some plumbing code. But also note that we tried hard to keep this notification functionality abstract. Strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the persistence layer and the Doctrine ORM or DBAL. You may find that property notification events come in handy in many other scenarios as well. As mentioned earlier, the Doctrine\Common namespace is not that evil and consists solely of very small classes and interfaces that have almost no external dependencies (none to the DBAL and none to the ORM) and that you can easily take with you should you want to swap out the persistence layer. This change tracking policy does not introduce a dependency on the Doctrine DBAL/ORM or the persistence layer.

The positive point and main advantage of this policy is its effectiveness. It has the best performance characteristics of the 3 policies with larger units of work and a flush() operation is very cheap when nothing has changed.

Partial Objects¶

A partial object is an object whose state is not fully initialized after being reconstituted from the database and that is disconnected from the rest of its data. The following section will describe why partial objects are problematic and what the approach of Doctrine2 to this problem is.

Note

The partial object problem in general does not apply to methods or queries where you do not retrieve the query result as objects. Examples are: Query#getArrayResult(), Query#getScalarResult(), Query#getSingleScalarResult(), etc.

Warning

Use of partial objects is tricky. Fields that are not retrieved from the database will not be updated by the UnitOfWork even if they get changed in your objects. You can only promote a partial object to a fully-loaded object by calling EntityManager#refresh() or a DQL query with the refresh flag.

What is the problem?¶

In short, partial objects are problematic because they are usually objects with broken invariants. As such, code that uses these partial objects tends to be very fragile and either needs to “know” which fields or methods can be safely accessed or add checks around every field access or method invocation. The same holds true for the internals, i.e. the method implementations, of such objects. You usually simply assume the state you need in the method is available, after all you properly constructed this object before you pushed it into the database, right? These blind assumptions can quickly lead to null reference errors when working with such partial objects.

It gets worse with the scenario of an optional association (0..1 to 1). When the associated field is NULL, you don’t know whether this object does not have an associated object or whether it was simply not loaded when the owning object was loaded from the database.

These are reasons why many ORMs do not allow partial objects at all and instead you always have to load an object with all its fields (associations being proxied). One secure way to allow partial objects is if the programming language/platform allows the ORM tool to hook deeply into the object and instrument it in such a way that individual fields (not only associations) can be loaded lazily on first access. This is possible in Java, for example, through bytecode instrumentation. In PHP though this is not possible, so there is no way to have “secure” partial objects in an ORM with transparent persistence.

Doctrine, by default, does not allow partial objects. That means, any query that only selects partial object data and wants to retrieve the result as objects (i.e. Query#getResult()) will raise an exception telling you that partial objects are dangerous. If you want to force a query to return you partial objects, possibly as a performance tweak, you can use the partial keyword as follows:

<?php
$q = $em->createQuery("select partial u.{id,name} from MyApp\Domain\User u");

You can also get a partial reference instead of a proxy reference by calling:

<?php
$reference = $em->getPartialReference('MyApp\Domain\User', 1);

Partial references are objects with only the identifiers set as they are passed to the second argument of the getPartialReference() method. All other fields are null.

When should I force partial objects?¶

Mainly for optimization purposes, but be careful of premature optimization as partial objects lead to potentially more fragile code.

XML Mapping¶

The XML mapping driver enables you to provide the ORM metadata in form of XML documents.

The XML driver is backed by an XML Schema document that describes the structure of a mapping document. The most recent version of the XML Schema document is available online at http://www.doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd. In order to point to the latest version of the document of a particular stable release branch, just append the release number, i.e.: doctrine-mapping-2.0.xsd The most convenient way to work with XML mapping files is to use an IDE/editor that can provide code-completion based on such an XML Schema document. The following is an outline of a XML mapping document with the proper xmlns/xsi setup for the latest code in trunk.

<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                   https://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    ...

</doctrine-mapping>

The XML mapping document of a class is loaded on-demand the first time it is requested and subsequently stored in the metadata cache. In order to work, this requires certain conventions:

Each entity/mapped superclass must get its own dedicated XML mapping document.
The name of the mapping document must consist of the fully qualified name of the class, where namespace separators are replaced by dots (.). For example an Entity with the fully qualified class-name “MyProject” would require a mapping file “MyProject.Entities.User.dcm.xml” unless the extension is changed.
All mapping documents should get the extension ”.dcm.xml” to identify it as a Doctrine mapping file. This is more of a convention and you are not forced to do this. You can change the file extension easily enough.

<?php
$driver->setFileExtension('.xml');

It is recommended to put all XML mapping documents in a single folder but you can spread the documents over several folders if you want to. In order to tell the XmlDriver where to look for your mapping documents, supply an array of paths as the first argument of the constructor, like this:

<?php
$config = new \Doctrine\ORM\Configuration();
$driver = new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\XmlDriver(array('/path/to/files1', '/path/to/files2'));
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Simplified XML Driver¶

The Symfony project sponsored a driver that simplifies usage of the XML Driver. The changes between the original driver are:

File Extension is .orm.xml
Filenames are shortened, “MyProjectEntitiesUser” will become User.orm.xml
You can add a global file and add multiple entities in this file.

Configuration of this client works a little bit different:

<?php
$namespaces = array(
    'MyProject\Entities' => '/path/to/files1',
    'OtherProject\Entities' => '/path/to/files2'
);
$driver = new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\SimplifiedXmlDriver($namespaces);
$driver->setGlobalBasename('global'); // global.orm.xml

Example¶

As a quick start, here is a small example document that makes use of several common elements:

// Doctrine.Tests.ORM.Mapping.User.dcm.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                          http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity name="Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Mapping\User" table="cms_users">

        <indexes>
            <index name="name_idx" columns="name"/>
            <index columns="user_email"/>
        </indexes>

        <unique-constraints>
            <unique-constraint columns="name,user_email" name="search_idx" />
        </unique-constraints>

        <lifecycle-callbacks>
            <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="doStuffOnPrePersist"/>
            <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="doOtherStuffOnPrePersistToo"/>
            <lifecycle-callback type="postPersist" method="doStuffOnPostPersist"/>
        </lifecycle-callbacks>

        <id name="id" type="integer" column="id">
            <generator strategy="AUTO"/>
            <sequence-generator sequence-name="tablename_seq" allocation-size="100" initial-value="1" />
        </id>

        <field name="name" column="name" type="string" length="50" nullable="true" unique="true" />
        <field name="email" column="user_email" type="string" column-definition="CHAR(32) NOT NULL" />

        <one-to-one field="address" target-entity="Address" inversed-by="user">
            <cascade><cascade-remove /></cascade>
            <join-column name="address_id" referenced-column-name="id" on-delete="CASCADE" on-update="CASCADE"/>
        </one-to-one>

        <one-to-many field="phonenumbers" target-entity="Phonenumber" mapped-by="user">
            <cascade>
                <cascade-persist/>
            </cascade>
            <order-by>
                <order-by-field name="number" direction="ASC" />
            </order-by>
        </one-to-many>

        <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
            <cascade>
                <cascade-all/>
            </cascade>
            <join-table name="cms_users_groups">
                <join-columns>
                    <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" nullable="false" unique="false" />
                </join-columns>
                <inverse-join-columns>
                    <join-column name="group_id" referenced-column-name="id" column-definition="INT NULL" />
                </inverse-join-columns>
            </join-table>
        </many-to-many>

    </entity>

</doctrine-mapping>

Be aware that class-names specified in the XML files should be fully qualified.

XML-Element Reference¶

The XML-Element reference explains all the tags and attributes that the Doctrine Mapping XSD Schema defines. You should read the Basic-, Association- and Inheritance Mapping chapters to understand what each of this definitions means in detail.

Defining an Entity¶

Each XML Mapping File contains the definition of one entity, specified as the <entity /> element as a direct child of the <doctrine-mapping /> element:

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="MyProject\User" table="cms_users" repository-class="MyProject\UserRepository">
        <!-- definition here -->
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

Required attributes:

name - The fully qualified class-name of the entity.

Optional attributes:

table - The Table-Name to be used for this entity. Otherwise the Unqualified Class-Name is used by default.
repository-class - The fully qualified class-name of an alternative Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository implementation to be used with this entity.
inheritance-type - The type of inheritance, defaults to none. A more detailed description follows in the Defining Inheritance Mappings section.
read-only - (>= 2.1) Specifies that this entity is marked as read only and not considered for change-tracking. Entities of this type can be persisted and removed though.

Defining Fields¶

Each entity class can contain zero to infinite fields that are managed by Doctrine. You can define them using the <field /> element as a children to the <entity /> element. The field element is only used for primitive types that are not the ID of the entity. For the ID mapping you have to use the <id /> element.

<entity name="MyProject\User">

    <field name="name" type="string" length="50" />
    <field name="username" type="string" unique="true" />
    <field name="age" type="integer" nullable="true" />
    <field name="isActive" column="is_active" type="boolean" />
    <field name="weight" type="decimal" scale="5" precision="2" />
</entity>

Required attributes:

name - The name of the Property/Field on the given Entity PHP class.

Optional attributes:

type - The Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type name, defaults to “string”
column - Name of the column in the database, defaults to the field name.
length - The length of the given type, for use with strings only.
unique - Should this field contain a unique value across the table? Defaults to false.
nullable - Should this field allow NULL as a value? Defaults to false.
version - Should this field be used for optimistic locking? Only works on fields with type integer or datetime.
scale - Scale of a decimal type.
precision - Precision of a decimal type.
column-definition - Optional alternative SQL representation for this column. This definition begin after the field-name and has to specify the complete column definition. Using this feature will turn this field dirty for Schema-Tool update commands at all times.

Defining Identity and Generator Strategies¶

An entity has to have at least one <id /> element. For composite keys you can specify more than one id-element, however surrogate keys are recommended for use with Doctrine 2. The Id field allows to define properties of the identifier and allows a subset of the <field /> element attributes:

<entity name="MyProject\User">
    <id name="id" type="integer" column="user_id" />
</entity>

Required attributes:

name - The name of the Property/Field on the given Entity PHP class.
type - The Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type name, preferably “string” or “integer”.

Optional attributes:

column - Name of the column in the database, defaults to the field name.

Using the simplified definition above Doctrine will use no identifier strategy for this entity. That means you have to manually set the identifier before calling EntityManager#persist($entity). This is the so called ASSIGNED strategy.

If you want to switch the identifier generation strategy you have to nest a <generator /> element inside the id-element. This of course only works for surrogate keys. For composite keys you always have to use the ASSIGNED strategy.

<entity name="MyProject\User">
    <id name="id" type="integer" column="user_id">
        <generator strategy="AUTO" />
    </id>
</entity>

The following values are allowed for the <generator /> strategy attribute:

AUTO - Automatic detection of the identifier strategy based on the preferred solution of the database vendor.
IDENTITY - Use of a IDENTIFY strategy such as Auto-Increment IDs available to Doctrine AFTER the INSERT statement has been executed.
SEQUENCE - Use of a database sequence to retrieve the entity-ids. This is possible before the INSERT statement is executed.

If you are using the SEQUENCE strategy you can define an additional element to describe the sequence:

<entity name="MyProject\User">
    <id name="id" type="integer" column="user_id">
        <generator strategy="SEQUENCE" />
        <sequence-generator sequence-name="user_seq" allocation-size="5" initial-value="1" />
    </id>
</entity>

Required attributes for <sequence-generator />:

sequence-name - The name of the sequence

Optional attributes for <sequence-generator />:

allocation-size - By how much steps should the sequence be incremented when a value is retrieved. Defaults to 1
initial-value - What should the initial value of the sequence be.

NOTE

If you want to implement a cross-vendor compatible application you have to specify and additionally define the <sequence-generator /> element, if Doctrine chooses the sequence strategy for a platform.

Defining a Mapped Superclass¶

Sometimes you want to define a class that multiple entities inherit from, which itself is not an entity however. The chapter on Inheritance Mapping describes a Mapped Superclass in detail. You can define it in XML using the <mapped-superclass /> tag.

<doctrine-mapping>
    <mapped-superclass name="MyProject\BaseClass">
        <field name="created" type="datetime" />
        <field name="updated" type="datetime" />
    </mapped-superclass>
</doctrine-mapping>

Required attributes:

name - Class name of the mapped superclass.

You can nest any number of <field /> and unidirectional <many-to-one /> or <one-to-one /> associations inside a mapped superclass.

Defining Inheritance Mappings¶

There are currently two inheritance persistence strategies that you can choose from when defining entities that inherit from each other. Single Table inheritance saves the fields of the complete inheritance hierarchy in a single table, joined table inheritance creates a table for each entity combining the fields using join conditions.

You can specify the inheritance type in the <entity /> element and then use the <discriminator-column /> and <discriminator-mapping /> attributes.

<entity name="MyProject\Animal" inheritance-type="JOINED">
    <discriminator-column name="discr" type="string" />
    <discriminator-map>
        <discriminator-mapping value="cat" class="MyProject\Cat" />
        <discriminator-mapping value="dog" class="MyProject\Dog" />
        <discriminator-mapping value="mouse" class="MyProject\Mouse" />
    </discriminator-map>
</entity>

The allowed values for inheritance-type attribute are JOINED or SINGLE_TABLE.

Note

All inheritance related definitions have to be defined on the root entity of the hierarchy.

Defining Lifecycle Callbacks¶

You can define the lifecycle callback methods on your entities using the <lifecycle-callbacks /> element:

<entity name="Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Mapping\User" table="cms_users">

    <lifecycle-callbacks>
        <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="onPrePersist" />
    </lifecycle-callbacks>
</entity>

Defining One-To-One Relations¶

You can define One-To-One Relations/Associations using the <one-to-one /> element. The required and optional attributes depend on the associations being on the inverse or owning side.

For the inverse side the mapping is as simple as:

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <one-to-one field="address" target-entity="Address" mapped-by="user" />
</entity>

Required attributes for inverse One-To-One:

field - Name of the property/field on the entity’s PHP class.
target-entity - Name of the entity associated entity class. If this is not qualified the namespace of the current class is prepended. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!
mapped-by - Name of the field on the owning side (here Address entity) that contains the owning side association.

For the owning side this mapping would look like:

<entity class="MyProject\Address">
    <one-to-one field="user" target-entity="User" inversed-by="address" />
</entity>

Required attributes for owning One-to-One:

field - Name of the property/field on the entity’s PHP class.
target-entity - Name of the entity associated entity class. If this is not qualified the namespace of the current class is prepended. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes for owning One-to-One:

inversed-by - If the association is bidirectional the inversed-by attribute has to be specified with the name of the field on the inverse entity that contains the back-reference.
orphan-removal - If true, the inverse side entity is always deleted when the owning side entity is. Defaults to false.
fetch - Either LAZY or EAGER, defaults to LAZY. This attribute makes only sense on the owning side, the inverse side ALWAYS has to use the FETCH strategy.

The definition for the owning side relies on a bunch of mapping defaults for the join column names. Without the nested <join-column /> element Doctrine assumes to foreign key to be called user_id on the Address Entities table. This is because the MyProject\Address entity is the owning side of this association, which means it contains the foreign key.

The completed explicitly defined mapping is:

<entity class="MyProject\Address">
    <one-to-one field="user" target-entity="User" inversed-by="address">
        <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
    </one-to-one>
</entity>

Defining Many-To-One Associations¶

The many-to-one association is ALWAYS the owning side of any bidirectional association. This simplifies the mapping compared to the one-to-one case. The minimal mapping for this association looks like:

<entity class="MyProject\Article">
    <many-to-one field="author" target-entity="User" />
</entity>

Required attributes:

field - Name of the property/field on the entity’s PHP class.
target-entity - Name of the entity associated entity class. If this is not qualified the namespace of the current class is prepended. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

inversed-by - If the association is bidirectional the inversed-by attribute has to be specified with the name of the field on the inverse entity that contains the back-reference.
orphan-removal - If true the entity on the inverse side is always deleted when the owning side entity is and it is not connected to any other owning side entity anymore. Defaults to false.
fetch - Either LAZY or EAGER, defaults to LAZY.

This definition relies on a bunch of mapping defaults with regards to the naming of the join-column/foreign key. The explicitly defined mapping includes a <join-column /> tag nested inside the many-to-one association tag:

<entity class="MyProject\Article">
    <many-to-one field="author" target-entity="User">
        <join-column name="author_id" referenced-column-name="id" />
    </many-to-one>
</entity>

The join-column attribute name specifies the column name of the foreign key and the referenced-column-name attribute specifies the name of the primary key column on the User entity.

Defining One-To-Many Associations¶

The one-to-many association is ALWAYS the inverse side of any association. There exists no such thing as a uni-directional one-to-many association, which means this association only ever exists for bi-directional associations.

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <one-to-many field="phonenumbers" target-entity="Phonenumber" mapped-by="user" />
</entity>

Required attributes:

field - Name of the property/field on the entity’s PHP class.
target-entity - Name of the entity associated entity class. If this is not qualified the namespace of the current class is prepended. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!
mapped-by - Name of the field on the owning side (here Phonenumber entity) that contains the owning side association.

Optional attributes:

fetch - Either LAZY, EXTRA_LAZY or EAGER, defaults to LAZY.
index-by: Index the collection by a field on the target entity.

Defining Many-To-Many Associations¶

From all the associations the many-to-many has the most complex definition. When you rely on the mapping defaults you can omit many definitions and rely on their implicit values.

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group" />
</entity>

Required attributes:

field - Name of the property/field on the entity’s PHP class.
target-entity - Name of the entity associated entity class. If this is not qualified the namespace of the current class is prepended. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

mapped-by - Name of the field on the owning side that contains the owning side association if the defined many-to-many association is on the inverse side.
inversed-by - If the association is bidirectional the inversed-by attribute has to be specified with the name of the field on the inverse entity that contains the back-reference.
fetch - Either LAZY, EXTRA_LAZY or EAGER, defaults to LAZY.
index-by: Index the collection by a field on the target entity.

The mapping defaults would lead to a join-table with the name “User_Group” being created that contains two columns “user_id” and “group_id”. The explicit definition of this mapping would be:

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
        <join-table name="cms_users_groups">
            <join-columns>
                <join-column name="user_id" referenced-column-name="id"/>
            </join-columns>
            <inverse-join-columns>
                <join-column name="group_id" referenced-column-name="id"/>
            </inverse-join-columns>
        </join-table>
    </many-to-many>
</entity>

Here both the <join-columns> and <inverse-join-columns> tags are necessary to tell Doctrine for which side the specified join-columns apply. These are nested inside a <join-table /> attribute which allows to specify the table name of the many-to-many join-table.

Cascade Element¶

Doctrine allows cascading of several UnitOfWork operations to related entities. You can specify the cascade operations in the <cascade /> element inside any of the association mapping tags.

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
        <cascade>
            <cascade-all/>
        </cascade>
    </many-to-many>
</entity>

Besides <cascade-all /> the following operations can be specified by their respective tags:

<cascade-persist />
<cascade-merge />
<cascade-remove />
<cascade-refresh />

Join Column Element¶

In any explicitly defined association mapping you will need the <join-column /> tag. It defines how the foreign key and primary key names are called that are used for joining two entities.

Required attributes:

name - The column name of the foreign key.
referenced-column-name - The column name of the associated entities primary key

Optional attributes:

unique - If the join column should contain a UNIQUE constraint. This makes sense for Many-To-Many join-columns only to simulate a one-to-many unidirectional using a join-table.
nullable - should the join column be nullable, defaults to true.
on-delete - Foreign Key Cascade action to perform when entity is deleted, defaults to NO ACTION/RESTRICT but can be set to “CASCADE”.

Defining Order of To-Many Associations¶

You can require one-to-many or many-to-many associations to be retrieved using an additional ORDER BY.

<entity class="MyProject\User">
    <many-to-many field="groups" target-entity="Group">
        <order-by>
            <order-by-field name="name" direction="ASC" />
        </order-by>
    </many-to-many>
</entity>

Defining Indexes or Unique Constraints¶

To define additional indexes or unique constraints on the entities table you can use the <indexes /> and <unique-constraints /> elements:

<entity name="Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Mapping\User" table="cms_users">

    <indexes>
        <index name="name_idx" columns="name"/>
        <index columns="user_email"/>
    </indexes>

    <unique-constraints>
        <unique-constraint columns="name,user_email" name="search_idx" />
    </unique-constraints>
</entity>

You have to specify the column and not the entity-class field names in the index and unique-constraint definitions.

Derived Entities ID syntax¶

If the primary key of an entity contains a foreign key to another entity we speak of a derived entity relationship. You can define this in XML with the “association-key” attribute in the <id> tag.

<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
                    http://raw.github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/master/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

     <entity name="Application\Model\ArticleAttribute">
        <id name="article" association-key="true" />
        <id name="attribute" type="string" />

        <field name="value" type="string" />

        <many-to-one field="article" target-entity="Article" inversed-by="attributes" />
     <entity>

</doctrine-mapping>

YAML Mapping¶

The YAML mapping driver enables you to provide the ORM metadata in form of YAML documents.

The YAML mapping document of a class is loaded on-demand the first time it is requested and subsequently stored in the metadata cache. In order to work, this requires certain conventions:

Each entity/mapped superclass must get its own dedicated YAML mapping document.
The name of the mapping document must consist of the fully qualified name of the class, where namespace separators are replaced by dots (.).
All mapping documents should get the extension ”.dcm.yml” to identify it as a Doctrine mapping file. This is more of a convention and you are not forced to do this. You can change the file extension easily enough.

<?php
$driver->setFileExtension('.yml');

It is recommended to put all YAML mapping documents in a single folder but you can spread the documents over several folders if you want to. In order to tell the YamlDriver where to look for your mapping documents, supply an array of paths as the first argument of the constructor, like this:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\YamlDriver;

// $config instanceof Doctrine\ORM\Configuration
$driver = new YamlDriver(array('/path/to/files'));
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Simplified YAML Driver¶

The Symfony project sponsored a driver that simplifies usage of the YAML Driver. The changes between the original driver are:

File Extension is .orm.yml
Filenames are shortened, “MyProject\Entities\User” will become User.orm.yml
You can add a global file and add multiple entities in this file.

Configuration of this client works a little bit different:

<?php
$namespaces = array(
    '/path/to/files1' => 'MyProject\Entities',
    '/path/to/files2' => 'OtherProject\Entities'
);
$driver = new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\SimplifiedYamlDriver($namespaces);
$driver->setGlobalBasename('global'); // global.orm.yml

Example¶

As a quick start, here is a small example document that makes use of several common elements:

# Doctrine.Tests.ORM.Mapping.User.dcm.yml
Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Mapping\User:
  type: entity
  table: cms_users
  indexes:
    name_index:
      columns: [ name ]
  id:
    id:
      type: integer
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
  fields:
    name:
      type: string
      length: 50
  oneToOne:
    address:
      targetEntity: Address
      joinColumn:
        name: address_id
        referencedColumnName: id
  oneToMany:
    phonenumbers:
      targetEntity: Phonenumber
      mappedBy: user
      cascade: ["persist", "merge"]
  manyToMany:
    groups:
      targetEntity: Group
      joinTable:
        name: cms_users_groups
        joinColumns:
          user_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
        inverseJoinColumns:
          group_id:
            referencedColumnName: id
  lifecycleCallbacks:
    prePersist: [ doStuffOnPrePersist, doOtherStuffOnPrePersistToo ]
    postPersist: [ doStuffOnPostPersist ]

Be aware that class-names specified in the YAML files should be fully qualified.

Annotations Reference¶

In this chapter a reference of every Doctrine 2 Annotation is given with short explanations on their context and usage.

Reference¶

@Column¶

Marks an annotated instance variable as “persistent”. It has to be inside the instance variables PHP DocBlock comment. Any value hold inside this variable will be saved to and loaded from the database as part of the lifecycle of the instance variables entity-class.

Required attributes:

type: Name of the Doctrine Type which is converted between PHP and Database representation.

Optional attributes:

name: By default the property name is used for the database column name also, however the ‘name’ attribute allows you to determine the column name.
length: Used by the “string” type to determine its maximum length in the database. Doctrine does not validate the length of a string values for you.
precision: The precision for a decimal (exact numeric) column (Applies only for decimal column)
scale: The scale for a decimal (exact numeric) column (Applies only for decimal column)
unique: Boolean value to determine if the value of the column should be unique across all rows of the underlying entities table.
nullable: Determines if NULL values allowed for this column.
columnDefinition: DDL SQL snippet that starts after the column name and specifies the complete (non-portable!) column definition. This attribute allows to make use of advanced RMDBS features. However you should make careful use of this feature and the consequences. SchemaTool will not detect changes on the column correctly anymore if you use “columnDefinition”.

Additionally you should remember that the “type” attribute still handles the conversion between PHP and Database values. If you use this attribute on a column that is used for joins between tables you should also take a look at @JoinColumn.

Examples:

<?php
/**
 * @Column(type="string", length=32, unique=true, nullable=false)
 */
protected $username;

/**
 * @Column(type="string", columnDefinition="CHAR(2) NOT NULL")
 */
protected $country;

/**
 * @Column(type="decimal", precision=2, scale=1)
 */
protected $height;

@ColumnResult¶

References name of a column in the SELECT clause of a SQL query. Scalar result types can be included in the query result by specifying this annotation in the metadata.

Required attributes:

name: The name of a column in the SELECT clause of a SQL query

@ChangeTrackingPolicy¶

The Change Tracking Policy annotation allows to specify how the Doctrine 2 UnitOfWork should detect changes in properties of entities during flush. By default each entity is checked according to a deferred implicit strategy, which means upon flush UnitOfWork compares all the properties of an entity to a previously stored snapshot. This works out of the box, however you might want to tweak the flush performance where using another change tracking policy is an interesting option.

The details on all the available change tracking policies can be found in the configuration section.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @ChangeTrackingPolicy("DEFERRED_IMPLICIT")
 * @ChangeTrackingPolicy("DEFERRED_EXPLICIT")
 * @ChangeTrackingPolicy("NOTIFY")
 */
class User {}

@DiscriminatorColumn¶

This annotation is a required annotation for the topmost/super class of an inheritance hierarchy. It specifies the details of the column which saves the name of the class, which the entity is actually instantiated as.

Required attributes:

name: The column name of the discriminator. This name is also used during Array hydration as key to specify the class-name.

Optional attributes:

type: By default this is string.
length: By default this is 255.

@DiscriminatorMap¶

The discriminator map is a required annotation on the top-most/super class in an inheritance hierarchy. It takes an array as only argument which defines which class should be saved under which name in the database. Keys are the database value and values are the classes, either as fully- or as unqualified class names depending if the classes are in the namespace or not.

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

@Entity¶

Required annotation to mark a PHP class as Entity. Doctrine manages the persistence of all classes marked as entity.

Optional attributes:

repositoryClass: Specifies the FQCN of a subclass of the EntityRepository. Use of repositories for entities is encouraged to keep specialized DQL and SQL operations separated from the Model/Domain Layer.
readOnly: (>= 2.1) Specifies that this entity is marked as read only and not considered for change-tracking. Entities of this type can be persisted and removed though.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity(repositoryClass="MyProject\UserRepository")
 */
class User
{
    //...
}

@EntityResult¶

References an entity in the SELECT clause of a SQL query. If this annotation is used, the SQL statement should select all of the columns that are mapped to the entity object. This should include foreign key columns to related entities. The results obtained when insufficient data is available are undefined.

Required attributes:

entityClass: The class of the result.

Optional attributes:

fields: Array of @FieldResult, Maps the columns specified in the SELECT list of the query to the properties or fields of the entity class.
discriminatorColumn: Specifies the column name of the column in the SELECT list that is used to determine the type of the entity instance.

@FieldResult¶

Is used to map the columns specified in the SELECT list of the query to the properties or fields of the entity class.

Required attributes:

name: Name of the persistent field or property of the class.

Optional attributes:

column: Name of the column in the SELECT clause.

@GeneratedValue¶

Specifies which strategy is used for identifier generation for an instance variable which is annotated by @Id. This annotation is optional and only has meaning when used in conjunction with @Id.

If this annotation is not specified with @Id the NONE strategy is used as default.

Required attributes:

strategy: Set the name of the identifier generation strategy. Valid values are AUTO, SEQUENCE, TABLE, IDENTITY, UUID, CUSTOM and NONE.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Id
 * @Column(type="integer")
 * @GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
 */
protected $id = null;

@HasLifecycleCallbacks¶

Annotation which has to be set on the entity-class PHP DocBlock to notify Doctrine that this entity has entity life-cycle callback annotations set on at least one of its methods. Using @PostLoad, @PrePersist, @PostPersist, @PreRemove, @PostRemove, @PreUpdate or @PostUpdate without this marker annotation will make Doctrine ignore the callbacks.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @HasLifecycleCallbacks
 */
class User
{
    /**
     * @PostPersist
     */
    public function sendOptinMail() {}
}

@Index¶

Annotation is used inside the @Table annotation on the entity-class level. It allows to hint the SchemaTool to generate a database index on the specified table columns. It only has meaning in the SchemaTool schema generation context.

Required attributes:

name: Name of the Index
columns: Array of columns.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="ecommerce_products",indexes={@Index(name="search_idx", columns={"name", "email"})})
 */
class ECommerceProduct
{
}

@Id¶

The annotated instance variable will be marked as entity identifier, the primary key in the database. This annotation is a marker only and has no required or optional attributes. For entities that have multiple identifier columns each column has to be marked with @Id.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Id
 * @Column(type="integer")
 */
protected $id = null;

@InheritanceType¶

In an inheritance hierarchy you have to use this annotation on the topmost/super class to define which strategy should be used for inheritance. Currently Single Table and Class Table Inheritance are supported.

This annotation has always been used in conjunction with the @DiscriminatorMap and @DiscriminatorColumn annotations.

Examples:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("SINGLE_TABLE")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"person" = "Person", "employee" = "Employee"})
 */
class Person
{
    // ...
}

@JoinColumn¶

This annotation is used in the context of relations in @ManyToOne, @OneToOne fields and in the Context of @JoinTable nested inside a @ManyToMany. This annotation is not required. If its not specified the attributes name and referencedColumnName are inferred from the table and primary key names.

Required attributes:

name: Column name that holds the foreign key identifier for this relation. In the context of @JoinTable it specifies the column name in the join table.
referencedColumnName: Name of the primary key identifier that is used for joining of this relation.

Optional attributes:

unique: Determines if this relation exclusive between the affected entities and should be enforced so on the database constraint level. Defaults to false.
nullable: Determine if the related entity is required, or if null is an allowed state for the relation. Defaults to true.
onDelete: Cascade Action (Database-level)
columnDefinition: DDL SQL snippet that starts after the column name and specifies the complete (non-portable!) column definition. This attribute allows to make use of advanced RMDBS features. Using this attribute on @JoinColumn is necessary if you need slightly different column definitions for joining columns, for example regarding NULL/NOT NULL defaults. However by default a “columnDefinition” attribute on @Column also sets the related @JoinColumn’s columnDefinition. This is necessary to make foreign keys work.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Customer")
 * @JoinColumn(name="customer_id", referencedColumnName="id")
 */
private $customer;

@JoinColumns¶

An array of @JoinColumn annotations for a @ManyToOne or @OneToOne relation with an entity that has multiple identifiers.

@JoinTable¶

Using @OneToMany or @ManyToMany on the owning side of the relation requires to specify the @JoinTable annotation which describes the details of the database join table. If you do not specify @JoinTable on these relations reasonable mapping defaults apply using the affected table and the column names.

Required attributes:

name: Database name of the join-table
joinColumns: An array of @JoinColumn annotations describing the join-relation between the owning entities table and the join table.
inverseJoinColumns: An array of @JoinColumn annotations describing the join-relation between the inverse entities table and the join table.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber")
 * @JoinTable(name="users_phonenumbers",
 *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
 *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="phonenumber_id", referencedColumnName="id", unique=true)}
 * )
 */
public $phonenumbers;

@ManyToOne¶

Defines that the annotated instance variable holds a reference that describes a many-to-one relationship between two entities.

Required attributes:

targetEntity: FQCN of the referenced target entity. Can be the unqualified class name if both classes are in the same namespace. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

cascade: Cascade Option
fetch: One of LAZY or EAGER
inversedBy - The inversedBy attribute designates the field in the entity that is the inverse side of the relationship.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Cart", cascade={"all"}, fetch="EAGER")
 */
private $cart;

@ManyToMany¶

Defines an instance variable holds a many-to-many relationship between two entities. @JoinTable is an additional, optional annotation that has reasonable default configuration values using the table and names of the two related entities.

Required attributes:

targetEntity: FQCN of the referenced target entity. Can be the unqualified class name if both classes are in the same namespace. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

mappedBy: This option specifies the property name on the targetEntity that is the owning side of this relation. Its a required attribute for the inverse side of a relationship.
inversedBy: The inversedBy attribute designates the ﬁeld in the entity that is the inverse side of the relationship.
cascade: Cascade Option
fetch: One of LAZY, EXTRA_LAZY or EAGER
indexBy: Index the collection by a field on the target entity.

Note

For ManyToMany bidirectional relationships either side may be the owning side (the side that defines the @JoinTable and/or does not make use of the mappedBy attribute, thus using a default join table).

Example:

<?php
/**
 * Owning Side
 *
 * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group", inversedBy="features")
 * @JoinTable(name="user_groups",
 *      joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
 *      inverseJoinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="group_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
 *      )
 */
private $groups;

/**
 * Inverse Side
 *
 * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="groups")
 */
private $features;

@MappedSuperclass¶

An mapped superclass is an abstract or concrete class that provides persistent entity state and mapping information for its subclasses, but which is not itself an entity. This annotation is specified on the Class docblock and has no additional attributes.

The @MappedSuperclass annotation cannot be used in conjunction with @Entity. See the Inheritance Mapping section for more details on the restrictions of mapped superclasses.

Optional attributes:

repositoryClass: (>= 2.2) Specifies the FQCN of a subclass of the EntityRepository. That will be inherited for all subclasses of that Mapped Superclass.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @MappedSuperclass
 */
class MappedSuperclassBase
{
    // ... fields and methods
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class EntitySubClassFoo extends MappedSuperclassBase
{
    // ... fields and methods
}

@NamedNativeQuery¶

Is used to specify a native SQL named query. The NamedNativeQuery annotation can be applied to an entity or mapped superclass.

Required attributes:

name: The name used to refer to the query with the EntityManager methods that create query objects.
query: The SQL query string.

Optional attributes:

resultClass: The class of the result.
resultSetMapping: The name of a SqlResultSetMapping, as defined in metadata.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @NamedNativeQueries({
 *      @NamedNativeQuery(
 *          name            = "fetchJoinedAddress",
 *          resultSetMapping= "mappingJoinedAddress",
 *          query           = "SELECT u.id, u.name, u.status, a.id AS a_id, a.country, a.zip, a.city FROM cms_users u INNER JOIN cms_addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id WHERE u.username = ?"
 *      ),
 * })
 * @SqlResultSetMappings({
 *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
 *          name    = "mappingJoinedAddress",
 *          entities= {
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "__CLASS__",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "name"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "status"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.zip"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.city"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.country"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "address.id", column = "a_id"),
 *                  }
 *              )
 *          }
 *      )
 * })
 */
class User
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    public $id;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=50, nullable=true) */
    public $status;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255, unique=true) */
    public $username;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255) */
    public $name;

    /** @OneToOne(targetEntity="Address") */
    public $address;

    // ....
}

@OneToOne¶

The @OneToOne annotation works almost exactly as the @ManyToOne with one additional option that can be specified. The configuration defaults for @JoinColumn using the target entity table and primary key column names apply here too.

Required attributes:

targetEntity: FQCN of the referenced target entity. Can be the unqualified class name if both classes are in the same namespace. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

cascade: Cascade Option
fetch: One of LAZY or EAGER
orphanRemoval: Boolean that specifies if orphans, inverse OneToOne entities that are not connected to any owning instance, should be removed by Doctrine. Defaults to false.
inversedBy: The inversedBy attribute designates the ﬁeld in the entity that is the inverse side of the relationship.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Customer")
 * @JoinColumn(name="customer_id", referencedColumnName="id")
 */
private $customer;

@OneToMany¶

Required attributes:

targetEntity: FQCN of the referenced target entity. Can be the unqualified class name if both classes are in the same namespace. IMPORTANT: No leading backslash!

Optional attributes:

cascade: Cascade Option
orphanRemoval: Boolean that specifies if orphans, inverse OneToOne entities that are not connected to any owning instance, should be removed by Doctrine. Defaults to false.
mappedBy: This option specifies the property name on the targetEntity that is the owning side of this relation. Its a required attribute for the inverse side of a relationship.
fetch: One of LAZY, EXTRA_LAZY or EAGER.
indexBy: Index the collection by a field on the target entity.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber", mappedBy="user", cascade={"persist", "remove", "merge"}, orphanRemoval=true)
 */
public $phonenumbers;

@OrderBy¶

Optional annotation that can be specified with a @ManyToMany or @OneToMany annotation to specify by which criteria the collection should be retrieved from the database by using an ORDER BY clause.

This annotation requires a single non-attributed value with an DQL snippet:

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @ManyToMany(targetEntity="Group")
 * @OrderBy({"name" = "ASC"})
 */
private $groups;

The DQL Snippet in OrderBy is only allowed to consist of unqualified, unquoted field names and of an optional ASC/DESC positional statement. Multiple Fields are separated by a comma (,). The referenced field names have to exist on the targetEntity class of the @ManyToMany or @OneToMany annotation.

@PostLoad¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PostLoad event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PostPersist¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PostPersist event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PostRemove¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PostRemove event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PostUpdate¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PostUpdate event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PrePersist¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PrePersist event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PreRemove¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PreRemove event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@PreUpdate¶

Marks a method on the entity to be called as a @PreUpdate event. Only works with @HasLifecycleCallbacks in the entity class PHP DocBlock.

@SequenceGenerator¶

For the use with @generatedValue(strategy=”SEQUENCE”) this annotation allows to specify details about the sequence, such as the increment size and initial values of the sequence.

Required attributes:

sequenceName: Name of the sequence

Optional attributes:

allocationSize: Increment the sequence by the allocation size when its fetched. A value larger than 1 allows to optimize for scenarios where you create more than one new entity per request. Defaults to 10
initialValue: Where does the sequence start, defaults to 1.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Id
 * @GeneratedValue(strategy="SEQUENCE")
 * @Column(type="integer")
 * @SequenceGenerator(sequenceName="tablename_seq", initialValue=1, allocationSize=100)
 */
protected $id = null;

@SqlResultSetMapping¶

The SqlResultSetMapping annotation is used to specify the mapping of the result of a native SQL query. The SqlResultSetMapping annotation can be applied to an entity or mapped superclass.

Required attributes:

name: The name given to the result set mapping, and used to refer to it in the methods of the Query API.

Optional attributes:

entities: Array of @EntityResult, Specifies the result set mapping to entities.
columns: Array of @ColumnResult, Specifies the result set mapping to scalar values.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @NamedNativeQueries({
 *      @NamedNativeQuery(
 *          name            = "fetchUserPhonenumberCount",
 *          resultSetMapping= "mappingUserPhonenumberCount",
 *          query           = "SELECT id, name, status, COUNT(phonenumber) AS numphones FROM cms_users INNER JOIN cms_phonenumbers ON id = user_id WHERE username IN (?) GROUP BY id, name, status, username ORDER BY username"
 *      ),
 *      @NamedNativeQuery(
 *          name            = "fetchMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          resultSetMapping= "mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          query           = "SELECT u.id AS u_id, u.name AS u_name, u.status AS u_status, a.id AS a_id, a.zip AS a_zip, a.country AS a_country, COUNT(p.phonenumber) AS numphones FROM cms_users u INNER JOIN cms_addresses a ON u.id = a.user_id INNER JOIN cms_phonenumbers p ON u.id = p.user_id GROUP BY u.id, u.name, u.status, u.username, a.id, a.zip, a.country ORDER BY u.username"
 *      ),
 * })
 * @SqlResultSetMappings({
 *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
 *          name    = "mappingUserPhonenumberCount",
 *          entities= {
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "User",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "name"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "status"),
 *                  }
 *              )
 *          },
 *          columns = {
 *              @ColumnResult("numphones")
 *          }
 *      ),
 *      @SqlResultSetMapping(
 *          name    = "mappingMultipleJoinsEntityResults",
 *          entities= {
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "__CLASS__",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id",       column="u_id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "name",     column="u_name"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "status",   column="u_status"),
 *                  }
 *              ),
 *              @EntityResult(
 *                  entityClass = "Address",
 *                  fields      = {
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "id",       column="a_id"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "zip",      column="a_zip"),
 *                      @FieldResult(name = "country",  column="a_country"),
 *                  }
 *              )
 *          },
 *          columns = {
 *              @ColumnResult("numphones")
 *          }
 *      )
 *})
 */
 class User
{
    /** @Id @Column(type="integer") @GeneratedValue */
    public $id;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=50, nullable=true) */
    public $status;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255, unique=true) */
    public $username;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=255) */
    public $name;

    /** @OneToMany(targetEntity="Phonenumber") */
    public $phonenumbers;

    /** @OneToOne(targetEntity="Address") */
    public $address;

    // ....
}

@Table¶

Annotation describes the table an entity is persisted in. It is placed on the entity-class PHP DocBlock and is optional. If it is not specified the table name will default to the entities unqualified classname.

Required attributes:

name: Name of the table

Optional attributes:

indexes: Array of @Index annotations
uniqueConstraints: Array of @UniqueConstraint annotations.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="user",
 *      uniqueConstraints={@UniqueConstraint(name="user_unique",columns={"username"})},
 *      indexes={@Index(name="user_idx", columns={"email"})}
 * )
 */
class User { }

@UniqueConstraint¶

Annotation is used inside the @Table annotation on the entity-class level. It allows to hint the SchemaTool to generate a database unique constraint on the specified table columns. It only has meaning in the SchemaTool schema generation context.

Required attributes:

name: Name of the Index
columns: Array of columns.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @Table(name="ecommerce_products",uniqueConstraints={@UniqueConstraint(name="search_idx", columns={"name", "email"})})
 */
class ECommerceProduct
{
}

@Version¶

Marker annotation that defines a specified column as version attribute used in an optimistic locking scenario. It only works on @Column annotations that have the type integer or datetime. Combining @Version with @Id is not supported.

Example:

<?php
/**
 * @Column(type="integer")
 * @Version
 */
protected $version;

PHP Mapping¶

Doctrine 2 also allows you to provide the ORM metadata in the form of plain PHP code using the ClassMetadata API. You can write the code in PHP files or inside of a static function named loadMetadata($class) on the entity class itself.

PHP Files¶

If you wish to write your mapping information inside PHP files that are named after the entity and included to populate the metadata for an entity you can do so by using the PHPDriver:

<?php
$driver = new PHPDriver('/path/to/php/mapping/files');
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Now imagine we had an entity named Entities\User and we wanted to write a mapping file for it using the above configured PHPDriver instance:

<?php
namespace Entities;

class User
{
    private $id;
    private $username;
}

To write the mapping information you just need to create a file named Entities.User.php inside of the /path/to/php/mapping/files folder:

<?php
// /path/to/php/mapping/files/Entities.User.php

$metadata->mapField(array(
   'id' => true,
   'fieldName' => 'id',
   'type' => 'integer'
));

$metadata->mapField(array(
   'fieldName' => 'username',
   'type' => 'string'
));

Now we can easily retrieve the populated ClassMetadata instance where the PHPDriver includes the file and the ClassMetadataFactory caches it for later retrieval:

<?php
$class = $em->getClassMetadata('Entities\User');
// or
$class = $em->getMetadataFactory()->getMetadataFor('Entities\User');

Static Function¶

In addition to the PHP files you can also specify your mapping information inside of a static function defined on the entity class itself. This is useful for cases where you want to keep your entity and mapping information together but don’t want to use annotations. For this you just need to use the StaticPHPDriver:

<?php
$driver = new StaticPHPDriver('/path/to/entities');
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Now you just need to define a static function named loadMetadata($metadata) on your entity:

<?php
namespace Entities;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata;

class User
{
    // ...

    public static function loadMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
    {
        $metadata->mapField(array(
           'id' => true,
           'fieldName' => 'id',
           'type' => 'integer'
        ));

        $metadata->mapField(array(
           'fieldName' => 'username',
           'type' => 'string'
        ));
    }
}

ClassMetadataBuilder¶

To ease the use of the ClassMetadata API (which is very raw) there is a ClassMetadataBuilder that you can use.

<?php
namespace Entities;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Builder\ClassMetadataBuilder;

class User
{
    // ...

    public static function loadMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
    {
        $builder = new ClassMetadataBuilder($metadata);
        $builder->createField('id', 'integer')->isPrimaryKey()->generatedValue()->build();
        $builder->addField('username', 'string');
    }
}

The API of the ClassMetadataBuilder has the following methods with a fluent interface:

addField($name, $type, array $mapping)
setMappedSuperclass()
setReadOnly()
setCustomRepositoryClass($className)
setTable($name)
addIndex(array $columns, $indexName)
addUniqueConstraint(array $columns, $constraintName)
addNamedQuery($name, $dqlQuery)
setJoinedTableInheritance()
setSingleTableInheritance()
setDiscriminatorColumn($name, $type = 'string', $length = 255)
addDiscriminatorMapClass($name, $class)
setChangeTrackingPolicyDeferredExplicit()
setChangeTrackingPolicyNotify()
addLifecycleEvent($methodName, $event)
addManyToOne($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addInverseOneToOne($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)
addOwningOneToOne($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addOwningManyToMany($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addInverseManyToMany($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)
addOneToMany($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)

It also has several methods that create builders (which are necessary for advanced mappings):

createField($name, $type) returns a FieldBuilder instance
createManyToOne($name, $targetEntity) returns an AssociationBuilder instance
createOneToOne($name, $targetEntity) returns an AssociationBuilder instance
createManyToMany($name, $targetEntity) returns an ManyToManyAssociationBuilder instance
createOneToMany($name, $targetEntity) returns an OneToManyAssociationBuilder instance

ClassMetadataInfo API¶

The ClassMetadataInfo class is the base data object for storing the mapping metadata for a single entity. It contains all the getters and setters you need populate and retrieve information for an entity.

General Setters¶

setTableName($tableName)
setPrimaryTable(array $primaryTableDefinition)
setCustomRepositoryClass($repositoryClassName)
setIdGeneratorType($generatorType)
setIdGenerator($generator)
setSequenceGeneratorDefinition(array $definition)
setChangeTrackingPolicy($policy)
setIdentifier(array $identifier)

Inheritance Setters¶

setInheritanceType($type)
setSubclasses(array $subclasses)
setParentClasses(array $classNames)
setDiscriminatorColumn($columnDef)
setDiscriminatorMap(array $map)

Field Mapping Setters¶

mapField(array $mapping)
mapOneToOne(array $mapping)
mapOneToMany(array $mapping)
mapManyToOne(array $mapping)
mapManyToMany(array $mapping)

Lifecycle Callback Setters¶

addLifecycleCallback($callback, $event)
setLifecycleCallbacks(array $callbacks)

Versioning Setters¶

setVersionMapping(array &$mapping)
setVersioned($bool)
setVersionField()

General Getters¶

getTableName()
getTemporaryIdTableName()

Identifier Getters¶

getIdentifierColumnNames()
usesIdGenerator()
isIdentifier($fieldName)
isIdGeneratorIdentity()
isIdGeneratorSequence()
isIdGeneratorTable()
isIdentifierNatural()
getIdentifierFieldNames()
getSingleIdentifierFieldName()
getSingleIdentifierColumnName()

Inheritance Getters¶

isInheritanceTypeNone()
isInheritanceTypeJoined()
isInheritanceTypeSingleTable()
isInheritanceTypeTablePerClass()
isInheritedField($fieldName)
isInheritedAssociation($fieldName)

Change Tracking Getters¶

isChangeTrackingDeferredExplicit()
isChangeTrackingDeferredImplicit()
isChangeTrackingNotify()

Field & Association Getters¶

isUniqueField($fieldName)
isNullable($fieldName)
getColumnName($fieldName)
getFieldMapping($fieldName)
getAssociationMapping($fieldName)
getAssociationMappings()
getFieldName($columnName)
hasField($fieldName)
getColumnNames(array $fieldNames = null)
getTypeOfField($fieldName)
getTypeOfColumn($columnName)
hasAssociation($fieldName)
isSingleValuedAssociation($fieldName)
isCollectionValuedAssociation($fieldName)

Lifecycle Callback Getters¶

hasLifecycleCallbacks($lifecycleEvent)
getLifecycleCallbacks($event)

ClassMetadata API¶

The ClassMetadata class extends ClassMetadataInfo and adds the runtime functionality required by Doctrine. It adds a few extra methods related to runtime reflection for working with the entities themselves.

getReflectionClass()
getReflectionProperties()
getReflectionProperty($name)
getSingleIdReflectionProperty()
getIdentifierValues($entity)
setIdentifierValues($entity, $id)
setFieldValue($entity, $field, $value)
getFieldValue($entity, $field)

Caching¶

Doctrine provides cache drivers in the Common package for some of the most popular caching implementations such as APC, Memcache and Xcache. We also provide an ArrayCache driver which stores the data in a PHP array. Obviously, the cache does not live between requests but this is useful for testing in a development environment.

Cache Drivers¶

The cache drivers follow a simple interface that is defined in Doctrine\Common\Cache\Cache. All the cache drivers extend a base class Doctrine\Common\Cache\AbstractCache which implements the before mentioned interface.

The interface defines the following methods for you to publicly use.

fetch($id) - Fetches an entry from the cache.
contains($id) - Test if an entry exists in the cache.
save($id, $data, $lifeTime = false) - Puts data into the cache.
delete($id) - Deletes a cache entry.

Each driver extends the AbstractCache class which defines a few abstract protected methods that each of the drivers must implement.

_doFetch($id)
_doContains($id)
_doSave($id, $data, $lifeTime = false)
_doDelete($id)

The public methods fetch(), contains(), etc. utilize the above protected methods that are implemented by the drivers. The code is organized this way so that the protected methods in the drivers do the raw interaction with the cache implementation and the AbstractCache can build custom functionality on top of these methods.

APC¶

In order to use the APC cache driver you must have it compiled and enabled in your php.ini. You can read about APC in the PHP Documentation. It will give you a little background information about what it is and how you can use it as well as how to install it.

Below is a simple example of how you could use the APC cache driver by itself.

<?php
$cacheDriver = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache();
$cacheDriver->save('cache_id', 'my_data');

Memcache¶

In order to use the Memcache cache driver you must have it compiled and enabled in your php.ini. You can read about Memcache ` on the PHP website <http://us2.php.net/memcache>`_. It will give you a little background information about what it is and how you can use it as well as how to install it.

Below is a simple example of how you could use the Memcache cache driver by itself.

<?php
$memcache = new Memcache();
$memcache->connect('memcache_host', 11211);

$cacheDriver = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\MemcacheCache();
$cacheDriver->setMemcache($memcache);
$cacheDriver->save('cache_id', 'my_data');

Xcache¶

In order to use the Xcache cache driver you must have it compiled and enabled in your php.ini. You can read about Xcache here. It will give you a little background information about what it is and how you can use it as well as how to install it.

Below is a simple example of how you could use the Xcache cache driver by itself.

<?php
$cacheDriver = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\XcacheCache();
$cacheDriver->save('cache_id', 'my_data');

Redis¶

In order to use the Redis cache driver you must have it compiled and enabled in your php.ini. You can read about what is Redis from here. Also check A PHP extension for Redis for how you can use and install Redis PHP extension.

Below is a simple example of how you could use the Redis cache driver by itself.

<?php
$redis = new Redis();
$redis->connect('redis_host', 6379);

$cacheDriver = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\RedisCache();
$cacheDriver->setRedis($redis);
$cacheDriver->save('cache_id', 'my_data');

Using Cache Drivers¶

In this section we’ll describe how you can fully utilize the API of the cache drivers to save cache, check if some cache exists, fetch the cached data and delete the cached data. We’ll use the ArrayCache implementation as our example here.

<?php
$cacheDriver = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ArrayCache();

Saving¶

To save some data to the cache driver it is as simple as using the save() method.

<?php
$cacheDriver->save('cache_id', 'my_data');

The save() method accepts three arguments which are described below.

$id - The cache id
$data - The cache entry/data.
$lifeTime - The lifetime. If != false, sets a specific lifetime for this cache entry (null => infinite lifeTime).

You can save any type of data whether it be a string, array, object, etc.

<?php
$array = array(
    'key1' => 'value1',
    'key2' => 'value2'
);
$cacheDriver->save('my_array', $array);

Checking¶

Checking whether some cache exists is very simple, just use the contains() method. It accepts a single argument which is the ID of the cache entry.

<?php
if ($cacheDriver->contains('cache_id')) {
    echo 'cache exists';
} else {
    echo 'cache does not exist';
}

Fetching¶

Now if you want to retrieve some cache entry you can use the fetch() method. It also accepts a single argument just like contains() which is the ID of the cache entry.

<?php
$array = $cacheDriver->fetch('my_array');

Deleting¶

As you might guess, deleting is just as easy as saving, checking and fetching. We have a few ways to delete cache entries. You can delete by an individual ID, regular expression, prefix, suffix or you can delete all entries.

By Cache ID¶

<?php
$cacheDriver->delete('my_array');

All¶

If you simply want to delete all cache entries you can do so with the deleteAll() method.

<?php
$deleted = $cacheDriver->deleteAll();

Namespaces¶

If you heavily use caching in your application and utilize it in multiple parts of your application, or use it in different applications on the same server you may have issues with cache naming collisions. This can be worked around by using namespaces. You can set the namespace a cache driver should use by using the setNamespace() method.

<?php
$cacheDriver->setNamespace('my_namespace_');

Integrating with the ORM¶

The Doctrine ORM package is tightly integrated with the cache drivers to allow you to improve performance of various aspects of Doctrine by just simply making some additional configurations and method calls.

Query Cache¶

It is highly recommended that in a production environment you cache the transformation of a DQL query to its SQL counterpart. It doesn’t make sense to do this parsing multiple times as it doesn’t change unless you alter the DQL query.

This can be done by configuring the query cache implementation to use on your ORM configuration.

<?php
$config = new \Doctrine\ORM\Configuration();
$config->setQueryCacheImpl(new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache());

Result Cache¶

The result cache can be used to cache the results of your queries so that we don’t have to query the database or hydrate the data again after the first time. You just need to configure the result cache implementation.

<?php
$config->setResultCacheImpl(new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache());

Now when you’re executing DQL queries you can configure them to use the result cache.

<?php
$query = $em->createQuery('select u from \Entities\User u');
$query->useResultCache(true);

You can also configure an individual query to use a different result cache driver.

<?php
$query->setResultCacheDriver(new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache());

Note

Setting the result cache driver on the query will automatically enable the result cache for the query. If you want to disable it pass false to useResultCache().

<?php
$query->useResultCache(false);

If you want to set the time the cache has to live you can use the setResultCacheLifetime() method.

<?php
$query->setResultCacheLifetime(3600);

The ID used to store the result set cache is a hash which is automatically generated for you if you don’t set a custom ID yourself with the setResultCacheId() method.

<?php
$query->setResultCacheId('my_custom_id');

You can also set the lifetime and cache ID by passing the values as the second and third argument to useResultCache().

<?php
$query->useResultCache(true, 3600, 'my_custom_id');

Metadata Cache¶

Your class metadata can be parsed from a few different sources like YAML, XML, Annotations, etc. Instead of parsing this information on each request we should cache it using one of the cache drivers.

Just like the query and result cache we need to configure it first.

<?php
$config->setMetadataCacheImpl(new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache());

Now the metadata information will only be parsed once and stored in the cache driver.

Clearing the Cache¶

We’ve already shown you previously how you can use the API of the cache drivers to manually delete cache entries. For your convenience we offer a command line task for you to help you with clearing the query, result and metadata cache.

From the Doctrine command line you can run the following command.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache

Running this task with no arguments will clear all the cache for all the configured drivers. If you want to be more specific about what you clear you can use the following options.

To clear the query cache use the --query option.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --query

To clear the metadata cache use the --metadata option.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --metadata

To clear the result cache use the --result option.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --result

When you use the --result option you can use some other options to be more specific about what queries result sets you want to clear.

Just like the API of the cache drivers you can clear based on an ID, regular expression, prefix or suffix.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --result --id=cache_id

Or if you want to clear based on a regular expressions.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --result --regex=users_.*

Or with a prefix.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --result --prefix=users_

And finally with a suffix.

$ ./doctrine clear-cache --result --suffix=_my_account

Note

Using the --id, --regex, etc. options with the --query and --metadata are not allowed as it is not necessary to be specific about what you clear. You only ever need to completely clear the cache to remove stale entries.

Cache Slams¶

Something to be careful of when utilizing the cache drivers is cache slams. If you have a heavily trafficked website with some code that checks for the existence of a cache record and if it does not exist it generates the information and saves it to the cache. Now if 100 requests were issued all at the same time and each one sees the cache does not exist and they all try and insert the same cache entry it could lock up APC, Xcache, etc. and cause problems. Ways exist to work around this, like pre-populating your cache and not letting your users requests populate the cache.

You can read more about cache slams in this blog post.

Improving Performance¶

Bytecode Cache¶

It is highly recommended to make use of a bytecode cache like APC. A bytecode cache removes the need for parsing PHP code on every request and can greatly improve performance.

“If you care about performance and don’t use a bytecode cache then you don’t really care about performance. Please get one and start using it.”

Stas Malyshev, Core Contributor to PHP and Zend Employee

Metadata and Query caches¶

As already mentioned earlier in the chapter about configuring Doctrine, it is strongly discouraged to use Doctrine without a Metadata and Query cache (preferably with APC or Memcache as the cache driver). Operating Doctrine without these caches means Doctrine will need to load your mapping information on every single request and has to parse each DQL query on every single request. This is a waste of resources.

Alternative Query Result Formats¶

Make effective use of the available alternative query result formats like nested array graphs or pure scalar results, especially in scenarios where data is loaded for read-only purposes.

Read-Only Entities¶

Starting with Doctrine 2.1 you can mark entities as read only (See metadata mapping references for details). This means that the entity marked as read only is never considered for updates, which means when you call flush on the EntityManager these entities are skipped even if properties changed. Read-Only allows to persist new entities of a kind and remove existing ones, they are just not considered for updates.

Extra-Lazy Collections¶

If entities hold references to large collections you will get performance and memory problems initializing them. To solve this issue you can use the EXTRA_LAZY fetch-mode feature for collections. See the tutorial for more information on how this fetch mode works.

Temporarily change fetch mode in DQL¶

See Doctrine Query Language chapter

Apply Best Practices¶

A lot of the points mentioned in the Best Practices chapter will also positively affect the performance of Doctrine.

Tools¶

Doctrine Console¶

The Doctrine Console is a Command Line Interface tool for simplifying common administration tasks during the development of a project that uses Doctrine 2.

Take a look at the Installation and Configuration chapter for more information how to setup the console command.

Display Help Information¶

Type php vendor/bin/doctrine on the command line and you should see an overview of the available commands or use the –help flag to get information on the available commands. If you want to know more about the use of generate entities for example, you can call:

$> php vendor/bin/doctrine orm:generate-entities --help

Configuration¶

Whenever the doctrine command line tool is invoked, it can access all Commands that were registered by developer. There is no auto-detection mechanism at work. The Doctrine binary already registers all the commands that currently ship with Doctrine DBAL and ORM. If you want to use additional commands you have to register them yourself.

All the commands of the Doctrine Console require access to the EntityManager or DBAL Connection. You have to inject them into the console application using so called Helper-Sets. This requires either the db or the em helpers to be defined in order to work correctly.

Whenever you invoke the Doctrine binary the current folder is searched for a cli-config.php file. This file contains the project specific configuration:

<?php
$helperSet = new \Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\HelperSet(array(
    'db' => new \Doctrine\DBAL\Tools\Console\Helper\ConnectionHelper($conn)
));
$cli->setHelperSet($helperSet);

When dealing with the ORM package, the EntityManagerHelper is required:

<?php
$helperSet = new \Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\HelperSet(array(
    'em' => new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\Helper\EntityManagerHelper($em)
));
$cli->setHelperSet($helperSet);

The HelperSet instance has to be generated in a separate file (i.e. cli-config.php) that contains typical Doctrine bootstrap code and predefines the needed HelperSet attributes mentioned above. A sample cli-config.php file looks as follows:

<?php
// cli-config.php
require_once 'my_bootstrap.php';

// Any way to access the EntityManager from  your application
$em = GetMyEntityManager();

$helperSet = new \Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\HelperSet(array(
    'db' => new \Doctrine\DBAL\Tools\Console\Helper\ConnectionHelper($em->getConnection()),
    'em' => new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\Helper\EntityManagerHelper($em)
));

It is important to define a correct HelperSet that Doctrine binary script will ultimately use. The Doctrine Binary will automatically find the first instance of HelperSet in the global variable namespace and use this.

Note

You have to adjust this snippet for your specific application or framework and use their facilities to access the Doctrine EntityManager and Connection Resources.

Command Overview¶

The following Commands are currently available:

help Displays help for a command (?)
list Lists commands
dbal:import Import SQL file(s) directly to Database.
dbal:run-sql Executes arbitrary SQL directly from the command line.
orm:clear-cache:metadata Clear all metadata cache of the various cache drivers.
orm:clear-cache:query Clear all query cache of the various cache drivers.
orm:clear-cache:result Clear result cache of the various cache drivers.
orm:convert-d1-schema Converts Doctrine 1.X schema into a Doctrine 2.X schema.
orm:convert-mapping Convert mapping information between supported formats.
orm:ensure-production-settings Verify that Doctrine is properly configured for a production environment.
orm:generate-entities Generate entity classes and method stubs from your mapping information.
orm:generate-proxies Generates proxy classes for entity classes.
orm:generate-repositories Generate repository classes from your mapping information.
orm:run-dql Executes arbitrary DQL directly from the command line.
orm:schema-tool:create Processes the schema and either create it directly on EntityManager Storage Connection or generate the SQL output.
orm:schema-tool:drop Processes the schema and either drop the database schema of EntityManager Storage Connection or generate the SQL output.
orm:schema-tool:update Processes the schema and either update the database schema of EntityManager Storage Connection or generate the SQL output.

For these commands are also available aliases:

orm:convert:d1-schema is alias for orm:convert-d1-schema.
orm:convert:mapping is alias for orm:convert-mapping.
orm:generate:entities is alias for orm:generate-entities.
orm:generate:proxies is alias for orm:generate-proxies.
orm:generate:repositories is alias for orm:generate-repositories.

Note

Console also supports auto completion, for example, instead of orm:clear-cache:query you can use just o:c:q.

Database Schema Generation¶

Note

SchemaTool can do harm to your database. It will drop or alter tables, indexes, sequences and such. Please use this tool with caution in development and not on a production server. It is meant for helping you develop your Database Schema, but NOT with migrating schema from A to B in production. A safe approach would be generating the SQL on development server and saving it into SQL Migration files that are executed manually on the production server.

SchemaTool assumes your Doctrine Project uses the given database on its own. Update and Drop commands will mess with other tables if they are not related to the current project that is using Doctrine. Please be careful!

To generate your database schema from your Doctrine mapping files you can use the SchemaTool class or the schema-tool Console Command.

When using the SchemaTool class directly, create your schema using the createSchema() method. First create an instance of the SchemaTool and pass it an instance of the EntityManager that you want to use to create the schema. This method receives an array of ClassMetadataInfo instances.

<?php
$tool = new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\SchemaTool($em);
$classes = array(
  $em->getClassMetadata('Entities\User'),
  $em->getClassMetadata('Entities\Profile')
);
$tool->createSchema($classes);

To drop the schema you can use the dropSchema() method.

<?php
$tool->dropSchema($classes);

This drops all the tables that are currently used by your metadata model. When you are changing your metadata a lot during development you might want to drop the complete database instead of only the tables of the current model to clean up with orphaned tables.

<?php
$tool->dropSchema($classes, \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\SchemaTool::DROP_DATABASE);

You can also use database introspection to update your schema easily with the updateSchema() method. It will compare your existing database schema to the passed array of ClassMetdataInfo instances.

<?php
$tool->updateSchema($classes);

If you want to use this functionality from the command line you can use the schema-tool command.

To create the schema use the create command:

$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:create

To drop the schema use the drop command:

$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:drop

If you want to drop and then recreate the schema then use both options:

$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:drop
$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:create

As you would think, if you want to update your schema use the update command:

$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:update

All of the above commands also accept a --dump-sql option that will output the SQL for the ran operation.

$ php doctrine orm:schema-tool:create --dump-sql

Before using the orm:schema-tool commands, remember to configure your cli-config.php properly.

Note

When using the Annotation Mapping Driver you have to either setup your autoloader in the cli-config.php correctly to find all the entities, or you can use the second argument of the EntityManagerHelper to specify all the paths of your entities (or mapping files), i.e. new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\Helper\EntityManagerHelper($em, $mappingPaths);

Entity Generation¶

Generate entity classes and method stubs from your mapping information.

$ php doctrine orm:generate-entities
$ php doctrine orm:generate-entities --update-entities
$ php doctrine orm:generate-entities --regenerate-entities

This command is not suited for constant usage. It is a little helper and does not support all the mapping edge cases very well. You still have to put work in your entities after using this command.

It is possible to use the EntityGenerator on code that you have already written. It will not be lost. The EntityGenerator will only append new code to your file and will not delete the old code. However this approach may still be prone to error and we suggest you use code repositories such as GIT or SVN to make backups of your code.

It makes sense to generate the entity code if you are using entities as Data Access Objects only and don’t put much additional logic on them. If you are however putting much more logic on the entities you should refrain from using the entity-generator and code your entities manually.

Note

Even if you specified Inheritance options in your XML or YAML Mapping files the generator cannot generate the base and child classes for you correctly, because it doesn’t know which class is supposed to extend which. You have to adjust the entity code manually for inheritance to work!

Convert Mapping Information¶

Convert mapping information between supported formats.

This is an execute one-time command. It should not be necessary for you to call this method multiple times, especially when using the --from-database flag.

Converting an existing database schema into mapping files only solves about 70-80% of the necessary mapping information. Additionally the detection from an existing database cannot detect inverse associations, inheritance types, entities with foreign keys as primary keys and many of the semantical operations on associations such as cascade.

Note

There is no need to convert YAML or XML mapping files to annotations every time you make changes. All mapping drivers are first class citizens in Doctrine 2 and can be used as runtime mapping for the ORM. See the docs on XML and YAML Mapping for an example how to register this metadata drivers as primary mapping source.

To convert some mapping information between the various supported formats you can use the ClassMetadataExporter to get exporter instances for the different formats:

<?php
$cme = new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Export\ClassMetadataExporter();

Once you have a instance you can use it to get an exporter. For example, the yml exporter:

<?php
$exporter = $cme->getExporter('yml', '/path/to/export/yml');

Now you can export some ClassMetadata instances:

<?php
$classes = array(
  $em->getClassMetadata('Entities\User'),
  $em->getClassMetadata('Entities\Profile')
);
$exporter->setMetadata($classes);
$exporter->export();

This functionality is also available from the command line to convert your loaded mapping information to another format. The orm:convert-mapping command accepts two arguments, the type to convert to and the path to generate it:

$ php doctrine orm:convert-mapping xml /path/to/mapping-path-converted-to-xml

Reverse Engineering¶

You can use the DatabaseDriver to reverse engineer a database to an array of ClassMetadataInfo instances and generate YAML, XML, etc. from them.

Note

Reverse Engineering is a one-time process that can get you started with a project. Converting an existing database schema into mapping files only detects about 70-80% of the necessary mapping information. Additionally the detection from an existing database cannot detect inverse associations, inheritance types, entities with foreign keys as primary keys and many of the semantical operations on associations such as cascade.

First you need to retrieve the metadata instances with the DatabaseDriver:

<?php
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl(
    new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\DatabaseDriver(
        $em->getConnection()->getSchemaManager()
    )
);

$cmf = new DisconnectedClassMetadataFactory();
$cmf->setEntityManager($em);
$metadata = $cmf->getAllMetadata();

Now you can get an exporter instance and export the loaded metadata to yml:

<?php
$exporter = $cme->getExporter('yml', '/path/to/export/yml');
$exporter->setMetadata($metadata);
$exporter->export();

You can also reverse engineer a database using the orm:convert-mapping command:

$ php doctrine orm:convert-mapping --from-database yml /path/to/mapping-path-converted-to-yml

Note

Reverse Engineering is not always working perfectly depending on special cases. It will only detect Many-To-One relations (even if they are One-To-One) and will try to create entities from Many-To-Many tables. It also has problems with naming of foreign keys that have multiple column names. Any Reverse Engineered Database-Schema needs considerable manual work to become a useful domain model.

Runtime vs Development Mapping Validation¶

For performance reasons Doctrine 2 has to skip some of the necessary validation of metadata mappings. You have to execute this validation in your development workflow to verify the associations are correctly defined.

You can either use the Doctrine Command Line Tool:

doctrine orm:validate-schema

Or you can trigger the validation manually:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\SchemaValidator;

$validator = new SchemaValidator($entityManager);
$errors = $validator->validateMapping();

if (count($errors) > 0) {
    // Lots of errors!
    echo implode("\n\n", $errors);
}

If the mapping is invalid the errors array contains a positive number of elements with error messages.

Warning

One mapping option that is not validated is the use of the referenced column name. It has to point to the equivalent primary key otherwise Doctrine will not work.

Note

One common error is to use a backlash in front of the fully-qualified class-name. Whenever a FQCN is represented inside a string (such as in your mapping definitions) you have to drop the prefix backslash. PHP does this with get_class() or Reflection methods for backwards compatibility reasons.

Adding own commands¶

You can also add your own commands on-top of the Doctrine supported tools if you are using a manually built console script.

To include a new command on Doctrine Console, you need to do modify the doctrine.php file a little:

<?php
// doctrine.php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\Application;

// as before ...

// replace the ConsoleRunner::run() statement with:
$cli = new Application('Doctrine Command Line Interface', \Doctrine\ORM\Version::VERSION);
$cli->setCatchExceptions(true);
$cli->setHelperSet($helperSet);

// Register All Doctrine Commands
ConsoleRunner::addCommands($cli);

// Register your own command
$cli->addCommand(new \MyProject\Tools\Console\Commands\MyCustomCommand);

// Runs console application
$cli->run();

Additionally, include multiple commands (and overriding previously defined ones) is possible through the command:

<?php

$cli->addCommands(array(
    new \MyProject\Tools\Console\Commands\MyCustomCommand(),
    new \MyProject\Tools\Console\Commands\SomethingCommand(),
    new \MyProject\Tools\Console\Commands\AnotherCommand(),
    new \MyProject\Tools\Console\Commands\OneMoreCommand(),
));

Metadata Drivers¶

The heart of an object relational mapper is the mapping information that glues everything together. It instructs the EntityManager how it should behave when dealing with the different entities.

Core Metadata Drivers¶

Doctrine provides a few different ways for you to specify your metadata:

XML files (XmlDriver)
Class DocBlock Annotations (AnnotationDriver)
YAML files (YamlDriver)
PHP Code in files or static functions (PhpDriver)

Something important to note about the above drivers is they are all an intermediate step to the same end result. The mapping information is populated to Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata instances. So in the end, Doctrine only ever has to work with the API of the ClassMetadata class to get mapping information for an entity.

Note

The populated ClassMetadata instances are also cached so in a production environment the parsing and populating only ever happens once. You can configure the metadata cache implementation using the setMetadataCacheImpl() method on the Doctrine\ORM\Configuration class:

<?php
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataCacheImpl(new ApcCache());

If you want to use one of the included core metadata drivers you just need to configure it. All the drivers are in the Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver namespace:

<?php
$driver = new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\XmlDriver('/path/to/mapping/files');
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Implementing Metadata Drivers¶

In addition to the included metadata drivers you can very easily implement your own. All you need to do is define a class which implements the Driver interface:

<?php
namespace Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadataInfo;

interface Driver
{
    /**
     * Loads the metadata for the specified class into the provided container.
     *
     * @param string $className
     * @param ClassMetadataInfo $metadata
     */
    function loadMetadataForClass($className, ClassMetadataInfo $metadata);

    /**
     * Gets the names of all mapped classes known to this driver.
     *
     * @return array The names of all mapped classes known to this driver.
     */
    function getAllClassNames();

    /**
     * Whether the class with the specified name should have its metadata loaded.
     * This is only the case if it is either mapped as an Entity or a
     * MappedSuperclass.
     *
     * @param string $className
     * @return boolean
     */
    function isTransient($className);
}

If you want to write a metadata driver to parse information from some file format we’ve made your life a little easier by providing the AbstractFileDriver implementation for you to extend from:

<?php
class MyMetadataDriver extends AbstractFileDriver
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected $_fileExtension = '.dcm.ext';

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function loadMetadataForClass($className, ClassMetadataInfo $metadata)
    {
        $data = $this->_loadMappingFile($file);

        // populate ClassMetadataInfo instance from $data
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    protected function _loadMappingFile($file)
    {
        // parse contents of $file and return php data structure
    }
}

Note

When using the AbstractFileDriver it requires that you only have one entity defined per file and the file named after the class described inside where namespace separators are replaced by periods. So if you have an entity named Entities\User and you wanted to write a mapping file for your driver above you would need to name the file Entities.User.dcm.ext for it to be recognized.

Now you can use your MyMetadataDriver implementation by setting it with the setMetadataDriverImpl() method:

<?php
$driver = new MyMetadataDriver('/path/to/mapping/files');
$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

ClassMetadata¶

The last piece you need to know and understand about metadata in Doctrine 2 is the API of the ClassMetadata classes. You need to be familiar with them in order to implement your own drivers but more importantly to retrieve mapping information for a certain entity when needed.

You have all the methods you need to manually specify the mapping information instead of using some mapping file to populate it from. The base ClassMetadataInfo class is responsible for only data storage and is not meant for runtime use. It does not require that the class actually exists yet so it is useful for describing some entity before it exists and using that information to generate for example the entities themselves. The class ClassMetadata extends ClassMetadataInfo and adds some functionality required for runtime usage and requires that the PHP class is present and can be autoloaded.

You can read more about the API of the ClassMetadata classes in the PHP Mapping chapter.

Getting ClassMetadata Instances¶

If you want to get the ClassMetadata instance for an entity in your project to programmatically use some mapping information to generate some HTML or something similar you can retrieve it through the ClassMetadataFactory:

<?php
$cmf = $em->getMetadataFactory();
$class = $cmf->getMetadataFor('MyEntityName');

Now you can learn about the entity and use the data stored in the ClassMetadata instance to get all mapped fields for example and iterate over them:

<?php
foreach ($class->fieldMappings as $fieldMapping) {
    echo $fieldMapping['fieldName'] . "\n";
}

Best Practices¶

The best practices mentioned here that affect database design generally refer to best practices when working with Doctrine and do not necessarily reflect best practices for database design in general.

Don’t use public properties on entities¶

It is very important that you don’t map public properties on entities, but only protected or private ones. The reason for this is simple, whenever you access a public property of a proxy object that hasn’t been initialized yet the return value will be null. Doctrine cannot hook into this process and magically make the entity lazy load.

This can create situations where it is very hard to debug the current failure. We therefore urge you to map only private and protected properties on entities and use getter methods or magic __get() to access them.

Constrain relationships as much as possible¶

It is important to constrain relationships as much as possible. This means:

Impose a traversal direction (avoid bidirectional associations if possible)
Eliminate nonessential associations

This has several benefits:

Reduced coupling in your domain model
Simpler code in your domain model (no need to maintain bidirectionality properly)
Less work for Doctrine

Avoid composite keys¶

Even though Doctrine fully supports composite keys it is best not to use them if possible. Composite keys require additional work by Doctrine and thus have a higher probability of errors.

Use events judiciously¶

The event system of Doctrine is great and fast. Even though making heavy use of events, especially lifecycle events, can have a negative impact on the performance of your application. Thus you should use events judiciously.

Use cascades judiciously¶

Automatic cascades of the persist/remove/merge/etc. operations are very handy but should be used wisely. Do NOT simply add all cascades to all associations. Think about which cascades actually do make sense for you for a particular association, given the scenarios it is most likely used in.

Don’t use special characters¶

Avoid using any non-ASCII characters in class, field, table or column names. Doctrine itself is not unicode-safe in many places and will not be until PHP itself is fully unicode-aware (PHP6).

Don’t use identifier quoting¶

Identifier quoting is a workaround for using reserved words that often causes problems in edge cases. Do not use identifier quoting and avoid using reserved words as table or column names.

Initialize collections in the constructor¶

It is recommended best practice to initialize any business collections in entities in the constructor. Example:

<?php
namespace MyProject\Model;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

class User {
    private $addresses;
    private $articles;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->addresses = new ArrayCollection;
        $this->articles = new ArrayCollection;
    }
}

Don’t map foreign keys to fields in an entity¶

Foreign keys have no meaning whatsoever in an object model. Foreign keys are how a relational database establishes relationships. Your object model establishes relationships through object references. Thus mapping foreign keys to object fields heavily leaks details of the relational model into the object model, something you really should not do.

Use explicit transaction demarcation¶

While Doctrine will automatically wrap all DML operations in a transaction on flush(), it is considered best practice to explicitly set the transaction boundaries yourself. Otherwise every single query is wrapped in a small transaction (Yes, SELECT queries, too) since you can not talk to your database outside of a transaction. While such short transactions for read-only (SELECT) queries generally don’t have any noticeable performance impact, it is still preferable to use fewer, well-defined transactions that are established through explicit transaction boundaries.

Limitations and Known Issues¶

We try to make using Doctrine2 a very pleasant experience. Therefore we think it is very important to be honest about the current limitations to our users. Much like every other piece of software Doctrine2 is not perfect and far from feature complete. This section should give you an overview of current limitations of Doctrine 2 as well as critical known issues that you should know about.

Current Limitations¶

There is a set of limitations that exist currently which might be solved in the future. Any of this limitations now stated has at least one ticket in the Tracker and is discussed for future releases.

Join-Columns with non-primary keys¶

It is not possible to use join columns pointing to non-primary keys. Doctrine will think these are the primary keys and create lazy-loading proxies with the data, which can lead to unexpected results. Doctrine can for performance reasons not validate the correctness of this settings at runtime but only through the Validate Schema command.

Mapping Arrays to a Join Table¶

Related to the previous limitation with “Foreign Keys as Identifier” you might be interested in mapping the same table structure as given above to an array. However this is not yet possible either. See the following example:

CREATE TABLE product (
    id INTEGER,
    name VARCHAR,
    PRIMARY KEY(id)
);

CREATE TABLE product_attributes (
    product_id INTEGER,
    attribute_name VARCHAR,
    attribute_value VARCHAR,
    PRIMARY KEY (product_id, attribute_name)
);

This schema should be mapped to a Product Entity as follows:

class Product
{
    private $id;
    private $name;
    private $attributes = array();
}

Where the attribute_name column contains the key and attribute_value contains the value of each array element in $attributes.

The feature request for persistence of primitive value arrays is described in the DDC-298 ticket.

Value Objects¶

There is currently no native support value objects in Doctrine other than for DateTime instances or if you serialize the objects using serialize()/deserialize() which the DBAL Type “object” supports.

The feature request for full value-object support is described in the DDC-93 ticket.

Cascade Merge with Bi-directional Associations¶

There are two bugs now that concern the use of cascade merge in combination with bi-directional associations. Make sure to study the behavior of cascade merge if you are using it:

DDC-875 Merge can sometimes add the same entity twice into a collection
DDC-763 Cascade merge on associated entities can insert too many rows through “Persistence by Reachability”

Custom Persisters¶

A Persister in Doctrine is an object that is responsible for the hydration and write operations of an entity against the database. Currently there is no way to overwrite the persister implementation for a given entity, however there are several use-cases that can benefit from custom persister implementations:

Add Upsert Support
Evaluate possible ways in which stored-procedures can be used
The previous Filter Rules Feature Request

Persist Keys of Collections¶

PHP Arrays are ordered hash-maps and so should be the Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection interface. We plan to evaluate a feature that optionally persists and hydrates the keys of a Collection instance.

Ticket DDC-213

Mapping many tables to one entity¶

It is not possible to map several equally looking tables onto one entity. For example if you have a production and an archive table of a certain business concept then you cannot have both tables map to the same entity.

Behaviors¶

Doctrine 2 will never include a behavior system like Doctrine 1 in the core library. We don’t think behaviors add more value than they cost pain and debugging hell. Please see the many different blog posts we have written on this topics:

Doctrine2 “Behaviors” in a Nutshell
A re-usable Versionable behavior for Doctrine2
Write your own ORM on top of Doctrine2
Doctrine 2 Behavioral Extensions
Doctrator <https://github.com/pablodip/doctrator>_

Doctrine 2 has enough hooks and extension points so that you can add whatever you want on top of it. None of this will ever become core functionality of Doctrine2 however, you will have to rely on third party extensions for magical behaviors.

Nested Set¶

NestedSet was offered as a behavior in Doctrine 1 and will not be included in the core of Doctrine 2. However there are already two extensions out there that offer support for Nested Set with Doctrine 2:

Known Issues¶

The Known Issues section describes critical/blocker bugs and other issues that are either complicated to fix, not fixable due to backwards compatibility issues or where no simple fix exists (yet). We don’t plan to add every bug in the tracker there, just those issues that can potentially cause nightmares or pain of any sort.

See the Open Bugs on Jira for more details on bugs, improvement and feature requests.

Identifier Quoting and Legacy Databases¶

For compatibility reasons between all the supported vendors and edge case problems Doctrine 2 does NOT do automatic identifier quoting. This can lead to problems when trying to get legacy-databases to work with Doctrine 2.

You can quote column-names as described in the Basic-Mapping section.
You cannot quote join column names.
You cannot use non [a-zA-Z0-9_]+ characters, they will break several SQL statements.

Having problems with these kind of column names? Many databases support all CRUD operations on views that semantically map to certain tables. You can create views for all your problematic tables and column names to avoid the legacy quoting nightmare.

Microsoft SQL Server and Doctrine “datetime”¶

Doctrine assumes that you use DateTime2 data-types. If your legacy database contains DateTime datatypes then you have to add your own data-type (see Basic Mapping for an example).

Filters¶

New in version 2.2.

Doctrine 2.2 features a filter system that allows the developer to add SQL to the conditional clauses of queries, regardless the place where the SQL is generated (e.g. from a DQL query, or by loading associated entities).

The filter functionality works on SQL level. Whether a SQL query is generated in a Persister, during lazy loading, in extra lazy collections or from DQL. Each time the system iterates over all the enabled filters, adding a new SQL part as a filter returns.

By adding SQL to the conditional clauses of queries, the filter system filters out rows belonging to the entities at the level of the SQL result set. This means that the filtered entities are never hydrated (which can be expensive).

Example filter class¶

Throughout this document the example MyLocaleFilter class will be used to illustrate how the filter feature works. A filter class must extend the base Doctrine\ORM\Query\Filter\SQLFilter class and implement the addFilterConstraint method. The method receives the ClassMetadata of the filtered entity and the table alias of the SQL table of the entity.

Note

In the case of joined or single table inheritance, you always get passed the ClassMetadata of the inheritance root. This is necessary to avoid edge cases that would break the SQL when applying the filters.

Parameters for the query should be set on the filter object by SQLFilter#setParameter(). Only parameters set via this function can be used in filters. The SQLFilter#getParameter() function takes care of the proper quoting of parameters.

<?php
namespace Example;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetaData,
    Doctrine\ORM\Query\Filter\SQLFilter;

class MyLocaleFilter extends SQLFilter
{
    public function addFilterConstraint(ClassMetadata $targetEntity, $targetTableAlias)
    {
        // Check if the entity implements the LocalAware interface
        if (!$targetEntity->reflClass->implementsInterface('LocaleAware')) {
            return "";
        }

        return $targetTableAlias.'.locale = ' . $this->getParameter('locale'); // getParameter applies quoting automatically
    }
}

Configuration¶

Filter classes are added to the configuration as following:

<?php
$config->addFilter("locale", "\Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Functional\MyLocaleFilter");

The Configuration#addFilter() method takes a name for the filter and the name of the class responsible for the actual filtering.

Disabling/Enabling Filters and Setting Parameters¶

Filters can be disabled and enabled via the FilterCollection which is stored in the EntityManager. The FilterCollection#enable($name) method will retrieve the filter object. You can set the filter parameters on that object.

<?php
$filter = $em->getFilters()->enable("locale");
$filter->setParameter('locale', 'en');

// Disable it
$filter = $em->getFilters()->disable("locale");

Warning

Disabling and enabling filters has no effect on managed entities. If you want to refresh or reload an object after having modified a filter or the FilterCollection, then you should clear the EntityManager and re-fetch your entities, having the new rules for filtering applied.

Implementing a NamingStrategy¶

New in version 2.3.

Using a naming strategy you can provide rules for automatically generating database identifiers, columns and tables names when the table/column name is not given. This feature helps reduce the verbosity of the mapping document, eliminating repetitive noise (eg: TABLE_).

Configuring a naming strategy¶

The default strategy used by Doctrine is quite minimal.

By default the Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\DefaultNamingStrategy uses the simple class name and the attributes names to generate tables and columns

You can specify a different strategy by calling Doctrine\ORM\Configuration#setNamingStrategy() :

<?php
$namingStrategy = new MyNamingStrategy();
$configuration()->setNamingStrategy($namingStrategy);

Underscore naming strategy¶

\Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\UnderscoreNamingStrategy is a built-in strategy that might be a useful if you want to use a underlying convention.

<?php
$namingStrategy = new \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\UnderscoreNamingStrategy(CASE_UPPER);
$configuration()->setNamingStrategy($namingStrategy);

Then SomeEntityName will generate the table SOME_ENTITY_NAME when CASE_UPPER or some_entity_name using CASE_LOWER is given.

Naming strategy interface¶

The interface Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\NamingStrategy allows you to specify a “naming standard” for database tables and columns.

<?php
/**
 * Return a table name for an entity class
 *
 * @param string $className The fully-qualified class name
 * @return string A table name
 */
function classToTableName($className);

/**
 * Return a column name for a property
 *
 * @param string $propertyName A property
 * @return string A column name
 */
function propertyToColumnName($propertyName);

/**
 * Return the default reference column name
 *
 * @return string A column name
 */
function referenceColumnName();

/**
 * Return a join column name for a property
 *
 * @param string $propertyName A property
 * @return string A join column name
 */
function joinColumnName($propertyName);

/**
 * Return a join table name
 *
 * @param string $sourceEntity The source entity
 * @param string $targetEntity The target entity
 * @param string $propertyName A property
 * @return string A join table name
 */
function joinTableName($sourceEntity, $targetEntity, $propertyName = null);

/**
 * Return the foreign key column name for the given parameters
 *
 * @param string $entityName A entity
 * @param string $referencedColumnName A property
 * @return string A join column name
 */
function joinKeyColumnName($entityName, $referencedColumnName = null);

Implementing a naming strategy¶

If you have database naming standards like all tables names should be prefixed by the application prefix, all column names should be upper case, you can easily achieve such standards by implementing a naming strategy. You need to implements NamingStrategy first. Following is an example

<?php
class MyAppNamingStrategy implements NamingStrategy
{
    public function classToTableName($className)
    {
        return 'MyApp_' . substr($className, strrpos($className, '\\') + 1);
    }
    public function propertyToColumnName($propertyName)
    {
        return $propertyName;
    }
    public function referenceColumnName()
    {
        return 'id';
    }
    public function joinColumnName($propertyName)
    {
        return $propertyName . '_' . $this->referenceColumnName();
    }
    public function joinTableName($sourceEntity, $targetEntity, $propertyName = null)
    {
        return strtolower($this->classToTableName($sourceEntity) . '_' .
                $this->classToTableName($targetEntity));
    }
    public function joinKeyColumnName($entityName, $referencedColumnName = null)
    {
        return strtolower($this->classToTableName($entityName) . '_' .
                ($referencedColumnName ?: $this->referenceColumnName()));
    }
}

Configuring the namingstrategy is easy if. Just set your naming strategy calling Doctrine\ORM\Configuration#setNamingStrategy() :.

<?php
$namingStrategy = new MyAppNamingStrategy();
$configuration()->setNamingStrategy($namingStrategy);

Advanced Configuration¶

The configuration of the EntityManager requires a Doctrine\ORM\Configuration instance as well as some database connection parameters. This example shows all the potential steps of configuration.

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager,
    Doctrine\ORM\Configuration;

// ...

if ($applicationMode == "development") {
    $cache = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ArrayCache;
} else {
    $cache = new \Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache;
}

$config = new Configuration;
$config->setMetadataCacheImpl($cache);
$driverImpl = $config->newDefaultAnnotationDriver('/path/to/lib/MyProject/Entities');
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driverImpl);
$config->setQueryCacheImpl($cache);
$config->setProxyDir('/path/to/myproject/lib/MyProject/Proxies');
$config->setProxyNamespace('MyProject\Proxies');

if ($applicationMode == "development") {
    $config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses(true);
} else {
    $config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses(false);
}

$connectionOptions = array(
    'driver' => 'pdo_sqlite',
    'path' => 'database.sqlite'
);

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

Note

Do not use Doctrine without a metadata and query cache! Doctrine is optimized for working with caches. The main parts in Doctrine that are optimized for caching are the metadata mapping information with the metadata cache and the DQL to SQL conversions with the query cache. These 2 caches require only an absolute minimum of memory yet they heavily improve the runtime performance of Doctrine. The recommended cache driver to use with Doctrine is APC. APC provides you with an opcode-cache (which is highly recommended anyway) and a very fast in-memory cache storage that you can use for the metadata and query caches as seen in the previous code snippet.

Configuration Options¶

The following sections describe all the configuration options available on a Doctrine\ORM\Configuration instance.

Proxy Directory (REQUIRED)¶

<?php
$config->setProxyDir($dir);
$config->getProxyDir();

Gets or sets the directory where Doctrine generates any proxy classes. For a detailed explanation on proxy classes and how they are used in Doctrine, refer to the “Proxy Objects” section further down.

Proxy Namespace (REQUIRED)¶

<?php
$config->setProxyNamespace($namespace);
$config->getProxyNamespace();

Gets or sets the namespace to use for generated proxy classes. For a detailed explanation on proxy classes and how they are used in Doctrine, refer to the “Proxy Objects” section further down.

Metadata Driver (REQUIRED)¶

<?php
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);
$config->getMetadataDriverImpl();

Gets or sets the metadata driver implementation that is used by Doctrine to acquire the object-relational metadata for your classes.

There are currently 4 available implementations:

Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\AnnotationDriver
Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\XmlDriver
Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\YamlDriver
Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\DriverChain

Throughout the most part of this manual the AnnotationDriver is used in the examples. For information on the usage of the XmlDriver or YamlDriver please refer to the dedicated chapters XML Mapping and YAML Mapping.

The annotation driver can be configured with a factory method on the Doctrine\ORM\Configuration:

<?php
$driverImpl = $config->newDefaultAnnotationDriver('/path/to/lib/MyProject/Entities');
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driverImpl);

The path information to the entities is required for the annotation driver, because otherwise mass-operations on all entities through the console could not work correctly. All of metadata drivers accept either a single directory as a string or an array of directories. With this feature a single driver can support multiple directories of Entities.

Metadata Cache (RECOMMENDED)¶

<?php
$config->setMetadataCacheImpl($cache);
$config->getMetadataCacheImpl();

Gets or sets the cache implementation to use for caching metadata information, that is, all the information you supply via annotations, xml or yaml, so that they do not need to be parsed and loaded from scratch on every single request which is a waste of resources. The cache implementation must implement the Doctrine\Common\Cache\Cache interface.

Usage of a metadata cache is highly recommended.

The recommended implementations for production are:

Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\MemcacheCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\XcacheCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\RedisCache

For development you should use the Doctrine\Common\Cache\ArrayCache which only caches data on a per-request basis.

Query Cache (RECOMMENDED)¶

<?php
$config->setQueryCacheImpl($cache);
$config->getQueryCacheImpl();

Gets or sets the cache implementation to use for caching DQL queries, that is, the result of a DQL parsing process that includes the final SQL as well as meta information about how to process the SQL result set of a query. Note that the query cache does not affect query results. You do not get stale data. This is a pure optimization cache without any negative side-effects (except some minimal memory usage in your cache).

Usage of a query cache is highly recommended.

The recommended implementations for production are:

Doctrine\Common\Cache\ApcCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\MemcacheCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\XcacheCache
Doctrine\Common\Cache\RedisCache

For development you should use the Doctrine\Common\Cache\ArrayCache which only caches data on a per-request basis.

SQL Logger (Optional)¶

<?php
$config->setSQLLogger($logger);
$config->getSQLLogger();

Gets or sets the logger to use for logging all SQL statements executed by Doctrine. The logger class must implement the Doctrine\DBAL\Logging\SQLLogger interface. A simple default implementation that logs to the standard output using echo and var_dump can be found at Doctrine\DBAL\Logging\EchoSQLLogger.

Auto-generating Proxy Classes (OPTIONAL)¶

<?php
$config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses($bool);
$config->getAutoGenerateProxyClasses();

Gets or sets whether proxy classes should be generated automatically at runtime by Doctrine. If set to FALSE, proxy classes must be generated manually through the doctrine command line task generate-proxies. The strongly recommended value for a production environment is FALSE.

Development vs Production Configuration¶

You should code your Doctrine2 bootstrapping with two different runtime models in mind. There are some serious benefits of using APC or Memcache in production. In development however this will frequently give you fatal errors, when you change your entities and the cache still keeps the outdated metadata. That is why we recommend the ArrayCache for development.

Furthermore you should have the Auto-generating Proxy Classes option to true in development and to false in production. If this option is set to TRUE it can seriously hurt your script performance if several proxy classes are re-generated during script execution. Filesystem calls of that magnitude can even slower than all the database queries Doctrine issues. Additionally writing a proxy sets an exclusive file lock which can cause serious performance bottlenecks in systems with regular concurrent requests.

Connection Options¶

The $connectionOptions passed as the first argument to EntityManager::create() has to be either an array or an instance of Doctrine\DBAL\Connection. If an array is passed it is directly passed along to the DBAL Factory Doctrine\DBAL\DriverManager::getConnection(). The DBAL configuration is explained in the DBAL section.

Proxy Objects¶

A proxy object is an object that is put in place or used instead of the “real” object. A proxy object can add behavior to the object being proxied without that object being aware of it. In Doctrine 2, proxy objects are used to realize several features but mainly for transparent lazy-loading.

Proxy objects with their lazy-loading facilities help to keep the subset of objects that are already in memory connected to the rest of the objects. This is an essential property as without it there would always be fragile partial objects at the outer edges of your object graph.

Doctrine 2 implements a variant of the proxy pattern where it generates classes that extend your entity classes and adds lazy-loading capabilities to them. Doctrine can then give you an instance of such a proxy class whenever you request an object of the class being proxied. This happens in two situations:

Reference Proxies¶

The method EntityManager#getReference($entityName, $identifier) lets you obtain a reference to an entity for which the identifier is known, without loading that entity from the database. This is useful, for example, as a performance enhancement, when you want to establish an association to an entity for which you have the identifier. You could simply do this:

<?php
// $em instanceof EntityManager, $cart instanceof MyProject\Model\Cart
// $itemId comes from somewhere, probably a request parameter
$item = $em->getReference('MyProject\Model\Item', $itemId);
$cart->addItem($item);

Here, we added an Item to a Cart without loading the Item from the database. If you invoke any method on the Item instance, it would fully initialize its state transparently from the database. Here $item is actually an instance of the proxy class that was generated for the Item class but your code does not need to care. In fact it should not care. Proxy objects should be transparent to your code.

Association proxies¶

The second most important situation where Doctrine uses proxy objects is when querying for objects. Whenever you query for an object that has a single-valued association to another object that is configured LAZY, without joining that association in the same query, Doctrine puts proxy objects in place where normally the associated object would be. Just like other proxies it will transparently initialize itself on first access.

Note

Joining an association in a DQL or native query essentially means eager loading of that association in that query. This will override the ‘fetch’ option specified in the mapping for that association, but only for that query.

Generating Proxy classes¶

Proxy classes can either be generated manually through the Doctrine Console or automatically by Doctrine. The configuration option that controls this behavior is:

<?php
$config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses($bool);
$config->getAutoGenerateProxyClasses();

The default value is TRUE for convenient development. However, this setting is not optimal for performance and therefore not recommended for a production environment. To eliminate the overhead of proxy class generation during runtime, set this configuration option to FALSE. When you do this in a development environment, note that you may get class/file not found errors if certain proxy classes are not available or failing lazy-loads if new methods were added to the entity class that are not yet in the proxy class. In such a case, simply use the Doctrine Console to (re)generate the proxy classes like so:

$ ./doctrine orm:generate-proxies

Autoloading Proxies¶

When you deserialize proxy objects from the session or any other storage it is necessary to have an autoloading mechanism in place for these classes. For implementation reasons Proxy class names are not PSR-0 compliant. This means that you have to register a special autoloader for these classes:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\Autoloader;

$proxyDir = "/path/to/proxies";
$proxyNamespace = "MyProxies";

Autoloader::register($proxyDir, $proxyNamespace);

If you want to execute additional logic to intercept the proxy file not found state you can pass a closure as the third argument. It will be called with the arguments proxydir, namespace and className when the proxy file could not be found.

Multiple Metadata Sources¶

When using different components using Doctrine 2 you may end up with them using two different metadata drivers, for example XML and YAML. You can use the DriverChain Metadata implementations to aggregate these drivers based on namespaces:

<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\DriverChain;

$chain = new DriverChain();
$chain->addDriver($xmlDriver, 'Doctrine\Tests\Models\Company');
$chain->addDriver($yamlDriver, 'Doctrine\Tests\ORM\Mapping');

Based on the namespace of the entity the loading of entities is delegated to the appropriate driver. The chain semantics come from the fact that the driver loops through all namespaces and matches the entity class name against the namespace using a strpos() === 0 call. This means you need to order the drivers correctly if sub-namespaces use different metadata driver implementations.

Default Repository (OPTIONAL)¶

Specifies the FQCN of a subclass of the EntityRepository. That will be available for all entities without a custom repository class.

<?php
$config->setDefaultRepositoryClassName($fqcn);
$config->getDefaultRepositoryClassName();

The default value is Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository. Any repository class must be a subclass of EntityRepository otherwise you got an ORMException

Setting up the Console¶

Doctrine uses the Symfony Console component for generating the command line interface. You can take a look at the vendor/bin/doctrine.php script and the Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\ConsoleRunner command for inspiration how to setup the cli.

In general the required code looks like this:

<?php
$cli = new Application('Doctrine Command Line Interface', \Doctrine\ORM\Version::VERSION);
$cli->setCatchExceptions(true);
$cli->setHelperSet($helperSet);
Doctrine\ORM\Tools\Console\ConsoleRunner::addCommands($cli);
$cli->run();

Cookbook¶

Aggregate Fields¶

Section author: Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de>

You will often come across the requirement to display aggregate values of data that can be computed by using the MIN, MAX, COUNT or SUM SQL functions. For any ORM this is a tricky issue traditionally. Doctrine 2 offers several ways to get access to these values and this article will describe all of them from different perspectives.

You will see that aggregate fields can become very explicit features in your domain model and how this potentially complex business rules can be easily tested.

An example model¶

Say you want to model a bank account and all their entries. Entries into the account can either be of positive or negative money values. Each account has a credit limit and the account is never allowed to have a balance below that value.

For simplicity we live in a world were money is composed of integers only. Also we omit the receiver/sender name, stated reason for transfer and the execution date. These all would have to be added on the Entry object.

Our entities look like:

<?php
namespace Bank\Entities;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Account
{
    /** @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer") */
    private $id;

    /** @Column(type="string", unique=true) */
    private $no;

    /**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Entry", mappedBy="account", cascade={"persist"})
     */
    private $entries;

    /**
     * @Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $maxCredit = 0;

    public function __construct($no, $maxCredit = 0)
    {
        $this->no = $no;
        $this->maxCredit = $maxCredit;
        $this->entries = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
    }
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Entry
{
    /** @Id @GeneratedValue @Column(type="integer") */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Account", inversedBy="entries")
     */
    private $account;

    /**
     * @Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $amount;

    public function __construct($account, $amount)
    {
        $this->account = $account;
        $this->amount = $amount;
        // more stuff here, from/to whom, stated reason, execution date and such
    }

    public function getAmount()
    {
        return $this->amount;
    }
}

Using DQL¶

The Doctrine Query Language allows you to select for aggregate values computed from fields of your Domain Model. You can select the current balance of your account by calling:

<?php
$dql = "SELECT SUM(e.amount) AS balance FROM Bank\Entities\Entry e " .
       "WHERE e.account = ?1";
$balance = $em->createQuery($dql)
              ->setParameter(1, $myAccountId)
              ->getSingleScalarResult();

The $em variable in this (and forthcoming) example holds the Doctrine EntityManager. We create a query for the SUM of all amounts (negative amounts are withdraws) and retrieve them as a single scalar result, essentially return only the first column of the first row.

This approach is simple and powerful, however it has a serious drawback. We have to execute a specific query for the balance whenever we need it.

To implement a powerful domain model we would rather have access to the balance from our Account entity during all times (even if the Account was not persisted in the database before!).

Also an additional requirement is the max credit per Account rule.

We cannot reliably enforce this rule in our Account entity with the DQL retrieval of the balance. There are many different ways to retrieve accounts. We cannot guarantee that we can execute the aggregation query for all these use-cases, let alone that a userland programmer checks this balance against newly added entries.

Using your Domain Model¶

Account and all the Entry instances are connected through a collection, which means we can compute this value at runtime:

<?php
class Account
{
    // .. previous code
    public function getBalance()
    {
        $balance = 0;
        foreach ($this->entries AS $entry) {
            $balance += $entry->getAmount();
        }
        return $balance;
    }
}

Now we can always call Account::getBalance() to access the current account balance.

To enforce the max credit rule we have to implement the “Aggregate Root” pattern as described in Eric Evans book on Domain Driven Design. Described with one sentence, an aggregate root controls the instance creation, access and manipulation of its children.

In our case we want to enforce that new entries can only added to the Account by using a designated method. The Account is the aggregate root of this relation. We can also enforce the correctness of the bi-directional Account <-> Entry relation with this method:

<?php
class Account
{
    public function addEntry($amount)
    {
        $this->assertAcceptEntryAllowed($amount);

        $e = new Entry($this, $amount);
        $this->entries[] = $e;
        return $e;
    }
}

Now look at the following test-code for our entities:

<?php
class AccountTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    public function testAddEntry()
    {
        $account = new Account("123456", $maxCredit = 200);
        $this->assertEquals(0, $account->getBalance());

        $account->addEntry(500);
        $this->assertEquals(500, $account->getBalance());

        $account->addEntry(-700);
        $this->assertEquals(-200, $account->getBalance());
    }

    public function testExceedMaxLimit()
    {
        $account = new Account("123456", $maxCredit = 200);

        $this->setExpectedException("Exception");
        $account->addEntry(-1000);
    }
}

To enforce our rule we can now implement the assertion in Account::addEntry:

<?php
class Account
{
    private function assertAcceptEntryAllowed($amount)
    {
        $futureBalance = $this->getBalance() + $amount;
        $allowedMinimalBalance = ($this->maxCredit * -1);
        if ($futureBalance < $allowedMinimalBalance) {
            throw new Exception("Credit Limit exceeded, entry is not allowed!");
        }
    }
}

We haven’t talked to the entity manager for persistence of our account example before. You can call EntityManager::persist($account) and then EntityManager::flush() at any point to save the account to the database. All the nested Entry objects are automatically flushed to the database also.

<?php
$account = new Account("123456", 200);
$account->addEntry(500);
$account->addEntry(-200);
$em->persist($account);
$em->flush();

The current implementation has a considerable drawback. To get the balance, we have to initialize the complete Account::$entries collection, possibly a very large one. This can considerably hurt the performance of your application.

Using an Aggregate Field¶

To overcome the previously mentioned issue (initializing the whole entries collection) we want to add an aggregate field called “balance” on the Account and adjust the code in Account::getBalance() and Account:addEntry():

<?php
class Account
{
    /**
     * @Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $balance = 0;

    public function getBalance()
    {
        return $this->balance;
    }

    public function addEntry($amount)
    {
        $this->assertAcceptEntryAllowed($amount);

        $e = new Entry($this, $amount);
        $this->entries[] = $e;
        $this->balance += $amount;
        return $e;
    }
}

This is a very simple change, but all the tests still pass. Our account entities return the correct balance. Now calling the Account::getBalance() method will not occur the overhead of loading all entries anymore. Adding a new Entry to the Account::$entities will also not initialize the collection internally.

Adding a new entry is therefore very performant and explicitly hooked into the domain model. It will only update the account with the current balance and insert the new entry into the database.

Tackling Race Conditions with Aggregate Fields¶

Whenever you denormalize your database schema race-conditions can potentially lead to inconsistent state. See this example:

<?php
// The Account $accId has a balance of 0 and a max credit limit of 200:
// request 1 account
$account1 = $em->find('Bank\Entities\Account', $accId);

// request 2 account
$account2 = $em->find('Bank\Entities\Account', $accId);

$account1->addEntry(-200);
$account2->addEntry(-200);

// now request 1 and 2 both flush the changes.

The aggregate field Account::$balance is now -200, however the SUM over all entries amounts yields -400. A violation of our max credit rule.

You can use both optimistic or pessimistic locking to save-guard your aggregate fields against this kind of race-conditions. Reading Eric Evans DDD carefully he mentions that the “Aggregate Root” (Account in our example) needs a locking mechanism.

Optimistic locking is as easy as adding a version column:

<?php
class Amount
{
    /** @Column(type="integer") @Version */
    private $version;
}

The previous example would then throw an exception in the face of whatever request saves the entity last (and would create the inconsistent state).

Pessimistic locking requires an additional flag set on the EntityManager::find() call, enabling write locking directly in the database using a FOR UPDATE.

<?php
use Doctrine\DBAL\LockMode;

$account = $em->find('Bank\Entities\Account', $accId, LockMode::PESSIMISTIC_READ);

Keeping Updates and Deletes in Sync¶

The example shown in this article does not allow changes to the value in Entry, which considerably simplifies the effort to keep Account::$balance in sync. If your use-case allows fields to be updated or related entities to be removed you have to encapsulate this logic in your “Aggregate Root” entity and adjust the aggregate field accordingly.

Conclusion¶

This article described how to obtain aggregate values using DQL or your domain model. It showed how you can easily add an aggregate field that offers serious performance benefits over iterating all the related objects that make up an aggregate value. Finally I showed how you can ensure that your aggregate fields do not get out of sync due to race-conditions and concurrent access.

Persisting the Decorator Pattern¶

Section author: Chris Woodford <chris.woodford@gmail.com>

This recipe will show you a simple example of how you can use Doctrine 2 to persist an implementation of the Decorator Pattern

Component¶

The Component class needs to be persisted, so it’s going to be an Entity. As the top of the inheritance hierarchy, it’s going to have to define the persistent inheritance. For this example, we will use Single Table Inheritance, but Class Table Inheritance would work as well. In the discriminator map, we will define two concrete subclasses, ConcreteComponent and ConcreteDecorator.

<?php

namespace Test;

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("SINGLE_TABLE")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({"cc" = "Test\Component\ConcreteComponent",
    "cd" = "Test\Decorator\ConcreteDecorator"})
 */
abstract class Component
{

    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer")
     * @GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    protected $id;

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

    /**
     * Get id
     * @return integer $id
     */
    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->id;
    }

    /**
     * Set name
     * @param string $name
     */
    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }

    /**
     * Get name
     * @return string $name
     */
    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

}

ConcreteComponent¶

The ConcreteComponent class is pretty simple and doesn’t do much more than extend the abstract Component class (only for the purpose of keeping this example simple).

<?php

namespace Test\Component;

use Test\Component;

/** @Entity */
class ConcreteComponent extends Component
{}

Decorator¶

The Decorator class doesn’t need to be persisted, but it does need to define an association with a persisted Entity. We can use a MappedSuperclass for this.

<?php

namespace Test;

/** @MappedSuperclass */
abstract class Decorator extends Component
{

    /**
     * @OneToOne(targetEntity="Test\Component", cascade={"all"})
     * @JoinColumn(name="decorates", referencedColumnName="id")
     */
    protected $decorates;

    /**
     * initialize the decorator
     * @param Component $c
     */
    public function __construct(Component $c)
    {
        $this->setDecorates($c);
    }

    /**
     * (non-PHPdoc)
     * @see Test.Component::getName()
     */
    public function getName()
    {
        return 'Decorated ' . $this->getDecorates()->getName();
    }

    /**
     * the component being decorated
     * @return Component
     */
    protected function getDecorates()
    {
        return $this->decorates;
    }

    /**
     * sets the component being decorated
     * @param Component $c
     */
    protected function setDecorates(Component $c)
    {
        $this->decorates = $c;
    }

}

All operations on the Decorator (i.e. persist, remove, etc) will cascade from the Decorator to the Component. This means that when we persist a Decorator, Doctrine will take care of persisting the chain of decorated objects for us. A Decorator can be treated exactly as a Component when it comes time to persisting it.

The Decorator's constructor accepts an instance of a Component, as defined by the Decorator pattern. The setDecorates/getDecorates methods have been defined as protected to hide the fact that a Decorator is decorating a Component and keeps the Component interface and the Decorator interface identical.

To illustrate the intended result of the Decorator pattern, the getName() method has been overridden to append a string to the Component's getName() method.

ConcreteDecorator¶

The final class required to complete a simple implementation of the Decorator pattern is the ConcreteDecorator. In order to further illustrate how the Decorator can alter data as it moves through the chain of decoration, a new field, “special”, has been added to this class. The getName() has been overridden and appends the value of the getSpecial() method to its return value.

<?php

namespace Test\Decorator;

use Test\Decorator;

/** @Entity */
class ConcreteDecorator extends Decorator
{

    /** @Column(type="string", nullable=true) */
    protected $special;

    /**
     * Set special
     * @param string $special
     */
    public function setSpecial($special)
    {
        $this->special = $special;
    }

    /**
     * Get special
     * @return string $special
     */
    public function getSpecial()
    {
        return $this->special;
    }

    /**
     * (non-PHPdoc)
     * @see Test.Component::getName()
     */
    public function getName()
    {
        return '[' . $this->getSpecial()
            . '] ' . parent::getName();
    }

}

Examples¶

Here is an example of how to persist and retrieve your decorated objects

<?php

use Test\Component\ConcreteComponent,
    Test\Decorator\ConcreteDecorator;

// assumes Doctrine 2 is configured and an instance of
// an EntityManager is available as $em

// create a new concrete component
$c = new ConcreteComponent();
$c->setName('Test Component 1');
$em->persist($c); // assigned unique ID = 1

// create a new concrete decorator
$c = new ConcreteComponent();
$c->setName('Test Component 2');

$d = new ConcreteDecorator($c);
$d->setSpecial('Really');
$em->persist($d);
// assigns c as unique ID = 2, and d as unique ID = 3

$em->flush();

$c = $em->find('Test\Component', 1);
$d = $em->find('Test\Component', 3);

echo get_class($c);
// prints: Test\Component\ConcreteComponent

echo $c->getName();
// prints: Test Component 1

echo get_class($d)
// prints: Test\Component\ConcreteDecorator

echo $d->getName();
// prints: [Really] Decorated Test Component 2

Extending DQL in Doctrine 2: Custom AST Walkers¶

Section author: Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de>

The Doctrine Query Language (DQL) is a proprietary sql-dialect that substitutes tables and columns for Entity names and their fields. Using DQL you write a query against the database using your entities. With the help of the metadata you can write very concise, compact and powerful queries that are then translated into SQL by the Doctrine ORM.

In Doctrine 1 the DQL language was not implemented using a real parser. This made modifications of the DQL by the user impossible. Doctrine 2 in contrast has a real parser for the DQL language, which transforms the DQL statement into an Abstract Syntax Tree and generates the appropriate SQL statement for it. Since this process is deterministic Doctrine heavily caches the SQL that is generated from any given DQL query, which reduces the performance overhead of the parsing process to zero.

You can modify the Abstract syntax tree by hooking into DQL parsing process by adding a Custom Tree Walker. A walker is an interface that walks each node of the Abstract syntax tree, thereby generating the SQL statement.

There are two types of custom tree walkers that you can hook into the DQL parser:

An output walker. This one actually generates the SQL, and there is only ever one of them. We implemented the default SqlWalker implementation for it.
A tree walker. There can be many tree walkers, they cannot generate the sql, however they can modify the AST before its rendered to sql.

Now this is all awfully technical, so let me come to some use-cases fast to keep you motivated. Using walker implementation you can for example:

Modify the AST to generate a Count Query to be used with a paginator for any given DQL query.
Modify the Output Walker to generate vendor-specific SQL (instead of ANSI).
Modify the AST to add additional where clauses for specific entities (example ACL, country-specific content...)
Modify the Output walker to pretty print the SQL for debugging purposes.

In this cookbook-entry I will show examples on the first two points. There are probably much more use-cases.

Generic count query for pagination¶

Say you have a blog and posts all with one category and one author. A query for the front-page or any archive page might look something like:

SELECT p, c, a FROM BlogPost p JOIN p.category c JOIN p.author a WHERE ...

Now in this query the blog post is the root entity, meaning its the one that is hydrated directly from the query and returned as an array of blog posts. In contrast the comment and author are loaded for deeper use in the object tree.

A pagination for this query would want to approximate the number of posts that match the WHERE clause of this query to be able to predict the number of pages to show to the user. A draft of the DQL query for pagination would look like:

SELECT count(DISTINCT p.id) FROM BlogPost p JOIN p.category c JOIN p.author a WHERE ...

Now you could go and write each of these queries by hand, or you can use a tree walker to modify the AST for you. Lets see how the API would look for this use-case:

<?php
$pageNum = 1;
$query = $em->createQuery($dql);
$query->setFirstResult( ($pageNum-1) * 20)->setMaxResults(20);

$totalResults = Paginate::count($query);
$results = $query->getResult();

The Paginate::count(Query $query) looks like:

<?php
class Paginate
{
    static public function count(Query $query)
    {
        /* @var $countQuery Query */
        $countQuery = clone $query;

        $countQuery->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_TREE_WALKERS, array('DoctrineExtensions\Paginate\CountSqlWalker'));
        $countQuery->setFirstResult(null)->setMaxResults(null);

        return $countQuery->getSingleScalarResult();
    }
}

It clones the query, resets the limit clause first and max results and registers the CountSqlWalker customer tree walker which will modify the AST to execute a count query. The walkers implementation is:

<?php
class CountSqlWalker extends TreeWalkerAdapter
{
    /**
     * Walks down a SelectStatement AST node, thereby generating the appropriate SQL.
     *
     * @return string The SQL.
     */
    public function walkSelectStatement(SelectStatement $AST)
    {
        $parent = null;
        $parentName = null;
        foreach ($this->_getQueryComponents() AS $dqlAlias => $qComp) {
            if ($qComp['parent'] === null && $qComp['nestingLevel'] == 0) {
                $parent = $qComp;
                $parentName = $dqlAlias;
                break;
            }
        }

        $pathExpression = new PathExpression(
            PathExpression::TYPE_STATE_FIELD | PathExpression::TYPE_SINGLE_VALUED_ASSOCIATION, $parentName,
            $parent['metadata']->getSingleIdentifierFieldName()
        );
        $pathExpression->type = PathExpression::TYPE_STATE_FIELD;

        $AST->selectClause->selectExpressions = array(
            new SelectExpression(
                new AggregateExpression('count', $pathExpression, true), null
            )
        );
    }
}

This will delete any given select expressions and replace them with a distinct count query for the root entities primary key. This will only work if your entity has only one identifier field (composite keys won’t work).

Modify the Output Walker to generate Vendor specific SQL¶

Most RMDBS have vendor-specific features for optimizing select query execution plans. You can write your own output walker to introduce certain keywords using the Query Hint API. A query hint can be set via Query::setHint($name, $value) as shown in the previous example with the HINT_CUSTOM_TREE_WALKERS query hint.

We will implement a custom Output Walker that allows to specify the SQL_NO_CACHE query hint.

<?php
$dql = "SELECT p, c, a FROM BlogPost p JOIN p.category c JOIN p.author a WHERE ...";
$query = $m->createQuery($dql);
$query->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, 'DoctrineExtensions\Query\MysqlWalker');
$query->setHint("mysqlWalker.sqlNoCache", true);
$results = $query->getResult();

Our MysqlWalker will extend the default SqlWalker. We will modify the generation of the SELECT clause, adding the SQL_NO_CACHE on those queries that need it:

<?php
class MysqlWalker extends SqlWalker
{
     /**
     * Walks down a SelectClause AST node, thereby generating the appropriate SQL.
     *
     * @param $selectClause
     * @return string The SQL.
     */
    public function walkSelectClause($selectClause)
    {
        $sql = parent::walkSelectClause($selectClause);

        if ($this->getQuery()->getHint('mysqlWalker.sqlNoCache') === true) {
            if ($selectClause->isDistinct) {
                $sql = str_replace('SELECT DISTINCT', 'SELECT DISTINCT SQL_NO_CACHE', $sql);
            } else {
                $sql = str_replace('SELECT', 'SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE', $sql);
            }
        }

        return $sql;
    }
}

Writing extensions to the Output Walker requires a very deep understanding of the DQL Parser and Walkers, but may offer your huge benefits with using vendor specific features. This would still allow you write DQL queries instead of NativeQueries to make use of vendor specific features.

DQL User Defined Functions¶

Section author: Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de>

By default DQL supports a limited subset of all the vendor-specific SQL functions common between all the vendors. However in many cases once you have decided on a specific database vendor, you will never change it during the life of your project. This decision for a specific vendor potentially allows you to make use of powerful SQL features that are unique to the vendor.

It is worth to mention that Doctrine 2 also allows you to handwrite your SQL instead of extending the DQL parser. Extending DQL is sort of an advanced extension point. You can map arbitrary SQL to your objects and gain access to vendor specific functionalities using the EntityManager#createNativeQuery() API as described in the Native Query chapter.

The DQL Parser has hooks to register functions that can then be used in your DQL queries and transformed into SQL, allowing to extend Doctrines Query capabilities to the vendors strength. This post explains the Used-Defined Functions API (UDF) of the Dql Parser and shows some examples to give you some hints how you would extend DQL.

There are three types of functions in DQL, those that return a numerical value, those that return a string and those that return a Date. Your custom method has to be registered as either one of those. The return type information is used by the DQL parser to check possible syntax errors during the parsing process, for example using a string function return value in a math expression.

Registering your own DQL functions¶

You can register your functions adding them to the ORM configuration:

<?php
$config = new \Doctrine\ORM\Configuration();
$config->addCustomStringFunction($name, $class);
$config->addCustomNumericFunction($name, $class);
$config->addCustomDatetimeFunction($name, $class);

$em = EntityManager::create($dbParams, $config);

The $name is the name the function will be referred to in the DQL query. $class is a string of a class-name which has to extend Doctrine\ORM\Query\Node\FunctionNode. This is a class that offers all the necessary API and methods to implement a UDF.

In this post we will implement some MySql specific Date calculation methods, which are quite handy in my opinion:

Date Diff¶

Mysql’s DateDiff function takes two dates as argument and calculates the difference in days with date1-date2.

The DQL parser is a top-down recursive descent parser to generate the Abstract-Syntax Tree (AST) and uses a TreeWalker approach to generate the appropriate SQL from the AST. This makes reading the Parser/TreeWalker code manageable in a finite amount of time.

The FunctionNode class I referred to earlier requires you to implement two methods, one for the parsing process (obviously) called parse and one for the TreeWalker process called getSql(). I show you the code for the DateDiff method and discuss it step by step:

<?php
/**
 * DateDiffFunction ::= "DATEDIFF" "(" ArithmeticPrimary "," ArithmeticPrimary ")"
 */
class DateDiff extends FunctionNode
{
    // (1)
    public $firstDateExpression = null;
    public $secondDateExpression = null;

    public function parse(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\Parser $parser)
    {
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER); // (2)
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_OPEN_PARENTHESIS); // (3)
        $this->firstDateExpression = $parser->ArithmeticPrimary(); // (4)
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_COMMA); // (5)
        $this->secondDateExpression = $parser->ArithmeticPrimary(); // (6)
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_CLOSE_PARENTHESIS); // (3)
    }

    public function getSql(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\SqlWalker $sqlWalker)
    {
        return 'DATEDIFF(' .
            $this->firstDateExpression->dispatch($sqlWalker) . ', ' .
            $this->secondDateExpression->dispatch($sqlWalker) .
        ')'; // (7)
    }
}

The Parsing process of the DATEDIFF function is going to find two expressions the date1 and the date2 values, whose AST Node representations will be saved in the variables of the DateDiff FunctionNode instance at (1).

The parse() method has to cut the function call “DATEDIFF” and its argument into pieces. Since the parser detects the function using a lookahead the T_IDENTIFIER of the function name has to be taken from the stack (2), followed by a detection of the arguments in (4)-(6). The opening and closing parenthesis have to be detected also. This happens during the Parsing process and leads to the generation of a DateDiff FunctionNode somewhere in the AST of the dql statement.

The ArithmeticPrimary method call is the most common denominator of valid EBNF tokens taken from the DQL EBNF grammar that matches our requirements for valid input into the DateDiff Dql function. Picking the right tokens for your methods is a tricky business, but the EBNF grammar is pretty helpful finding it, as is looking at the Parser source code.

Now in the TreeWalker process we have to pick up this node and generate SQL from it, which apparently is quite easy looking at the code in (7). Since we don’t know which type of AST Node the first and second Date expression are we are just dispatching them back to the SQL Walker to generate SQL from and then wrap our DATEDIFF function call around this output.

Now registering this DateDiff FunctionNode with the ORM using:

<?php
$config = new \Doctrine\ORM\Configuration();
$config->addCustomStringFunction('DATEDIFF', 'DoctrineExtensions\Query\MySql\DateDiff');

We can do fancy stuff like:

SELECT p FROM DoctrineExtensions\Query\BlogPost p WHERE DATEDIFF(CURRENT_TIME(), p.created) < 7

Date Add¶

Often useful it the ability to do some simple date calculations in your DQL query using MySql’s DATE_ADD function.

I’ll skip the blah and show the code for this function:

<?php
/**
 * DateAddFunction ::=
 *     "DATE_ADD" "(" ArithmeticPrimary ", INTERVAL" ArithmeticPrimary Identifier ")"
 */
class DateAdd extends FunctionNode
{
    public $firstDateExpression = null;
    public $intervalExpression = null;
    public $unit = null;

    public function parse(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\Parser $parser)
    {
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER);
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_OPEN_PARENTHESIS);

        $this->firstDateExpression = $parser->ArithmeticPrimary();

        $parser->match(Lexer::T_COMMA);
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER);

        $this->intervalExpression = $parser->ArithmeticPrimary();

        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER);

        /* @var $lexer Lexer */
        $lexer = $parser->getLexer();
        $this->unit = $lexer->token['value'];

        $parser->match(Lexer::T_CLOSE_PARENTHESIS);
    }

    public function getSql(\Doctrine\ORM\Query\SqlWalker $sqlWalker)
    {
        return 'DATE_ADD(' .
            $this->firstDateExpression->dispatch($sqlWalker) . ', INTERVAL ' .
            $this->intervalExpression->dispatch($sqlWalker) . ' ' . $this->unit .
        ')';
    }
}

The only difference compared to the DATEDIFF here is, we additionally need the Lexer to access the value of the T_IDENTIFIER token for the Date Interval unit, for example the MONTH in:

SELECT p FROM DoctrineExtensions\Query\BlogPost p WHERE DATE_ADD(CURRENT_TIME(), INTERVAL 4 MONTH) > p.created

The above method now only supports the specification using INTERVAL, to also allow a real date in DATE_ADD we need to add some decision logic to the parsing process (makes up for a nice exercise).

Now as you see, the Parsing process doesn’t catch all the possible SQL errors, here we don’t match for all the valid inputs for the interval unit. However where necessary we rely on the database vendors SQL parser to show us further errors in the parsing process, for example if the Unit would not be one of the supported values by MySql.

Conclusion¶

Now that you all know how you can implement vendor specific SQL functionalities in DQL, we would be excited to see user extensions that add vendor specific function packages, for example more math functions, XML + GIS Support, Hashing functions and so on.

For 2.0 we will come with the current set of functions, however for a future version we will re-evaluate if we can abstract even more vendor sql functions and extend the DQL languages scope.

Code for this Extension to DQL and other Doctrine Extensions can be found in my Github DoctrineExtensions repository.

Implementing ArrayAccess for Domain Objects¶

Section author: Roman Borschel (roman@code-factory.org)

This recipe will show you how to implement ArrayAccess for your domain objects in order to allow more uniform access, for example in templates. In these examples we will implement ArrayAccess on a Layer Supertype for all our domain objects.

Option 1¶

In this implementation we will make use of PHPs highly dynamic nature to dynamically access properties of a subtype in a supertype at runtime. Note that this implementation has 2 main caveats:

It will not work with private fields
It will not go through any getters/setters

<?php
abstract class DomainObject implements ArrayAccess
{
    public function offsetExists($offset) {
        return isset($this->$offset);
    }

    public function offsetSet($offset, $value) {
        $this->$offset = $value;
    }

    public function offsetGet($offset) {
        return $this->$offset;
    }

    public function offsetUnset($offset) {
        $this->$offset = null;
    }
}

Option 2¶

In this implementation we will dynamically invoke getters/setters. Again we use PHPs dynamic nature to invoke methods on a subtype from a supertype at runtime. This implementation has the following caveats:

It relies on a naming convention
The semantics of offsetExists can differ
offsetUnset will not work with typehinted setters

<?php
abstract class DomainObject implements ArrayAccess
{
    public function offsetExists($offset) {
        // In this example we say that exists means it is not null
        $value = $this->{"get$offset"}();
        return $value !== null;
    }

    public function offsetSet($offset, $value) {
        $this->{"set$offset"}($value);
    }

    public function offsetGet($offset) {
        return $this->{"get$offset"}();
    }

    public function offsetUnset($offset) {
        $this->{"set$offset"}(null);
    }
}

Read-only¶

You can slightly tweak option 1 or option 2 in order to make array access read-only. This will also circumvent some of the caveats of each option. Simply make offsetSet and offsetUnset throw an exception (i.e. BadMethodCallException).

<?php
abstract class DomainObject implements ArrayAccess
{
    public function offsetExists($offset) {
        // option 1 or option 2
    }

    public function offsetSet($offset, $value) {
        throw new BadMethodCallException("Array access of class " . get_class($this) . " is read-only!");
    }

    public function offsetGet($offset) {
        // option 1 or option 2
    }

    public function offsetUnset($offset) {
        throw new BadMethodCallException("Array access of class " . get_class($this) . " is read-only!");
    }
}

Implementing the Notify ChangeTracking Policy¶

Section author: Roman Borschel (roman@code-factory.org)

The NOTIFY change-tracking policy is the most effective change-tracking policy provided by Doctrine but it requires some boilerplate code. This recipe will show you how this boilerplate code should look like. We will implement it on a Layer Supertype for all our domain objects.

Implementing NotifyPropertyChanged¶

The NOTIFY policy is based on the assumption that the entities notify interested listeners of changes to their properties. For that purpose, a class that wants to use this policy needs to implement the NotifyPropertyChanged interface from the Doctrine\Common namespace.

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\NotifyPropertyChanged;
use Doctrine\Common\PropertyChangedListener;

abstract class DomainObject implements NotifyPropertyChanged
{
    private $listeners = array();

    public function addPropertyChangedListener(PropertyChangedListener $listener) {
        $this->listeners[] = $listener;
    }

    /** Notifies listeners of a change. */
    protected function onPropertyChanged($propName, $oldValue, $newValue) {
        if ($this->listeners) {
            foreach ($this->listeners as $listener) {
                $listener->propertyChanged($this, $propName, $oldValue, $newValue);
            }
        }
    }
}

Then, in each property setter of concrete, derived domain classes, you need to invoke onPropertyChanged as follows to notify listeners:

<?php
// Mapping not shown, either in annotations, xml or yaml as usual
class MyEntity extends DomainObject
{
    private $data;
    // ... other fields as usual

    public function setData($data) {
        if ($data != $this->data) { // check: is it actually modified?
            $this->onPropertyChanged('data', $this->data, $data);
            $this->data = $data;
        }
    }
}

The check whether the new value is different from the old one is not mandatory but recommended. That way you can avoid unnecessary updates and also have full control over when you consider a property changed.

Implementing Wakeup or Clone¶

Section author: Roman Borschel (roman@code-factory.org)

As explained in the restrictions for entity classes in the manual, it is usually not allowed for an entity to implement __wakeup or __clone, because Doctrine makes special use of them. However, it is quite easy to make use of these methods in a safe way by guarding the custom wakeup or clone code with an entity identity check, as demonstrated in the following sections.

Safely implementing __wakeup¶

To safely implement __wakeup, simply enclose your implementation code in an identity check as follows:

<?php
class MyEntity
{
    private $id; // This is the identifier of the entity.
    //...

    public function __wakeup()
    {
        // If the entity has an identity, proceed as normal.
        if ($this->id) {
            // ... Your code here as normal ...
        }
        // otherwise do nothing, do NOT throw an exception!
    }

    //...
}

Safely implementing __clone¶

Safely implementing __clone is pretty much the same:

<?php
class MyEntity
{
    private $id; // This is the identifier of the entity.
    //...

    public function __clone()
    {
        // If the entity has an identity, proceed as normal.
        if ($this->id) {
            // ... Your code here as normal ...
        }
        // otherwise do nothing, do NOT throw an exception!
    }

    //...
}

Summary¶

As you have seen, it is quite easy to safely make use of __wakeup and __clone in your entities without adding any really Doctrine-specific or Doctrine-dependant code.

These implementations are possible and safe because when Doctrine invokes these methods, the entities never have an identity (yet). Furthermore, it is possibly a good idea to check for the identity in your code anyway, since it’s rarely the case that you want to unserialize or clone an entity with no identity.

Integrating with CodeIgniter¶

This is recipe for using Doctrine 2 in your CodeIgniter framework.

Note

This might not work for all CodeIgniter versions and may require slight adjustments.

Here is how to set it up:

Make a CodeIgniter library that is both a wrapper and a bootstrap for Doctrine 2.

Setting up the file structure¶

Here are the steps:

Add a php file to your system/application/libraries folder called Doctrine.php. This is going to be your wrapper/bootstrap for the D2 entity manager.
Put the Doctrine folder (the one that contains Common, DBAL, and ORM) inside that same libraries folder.
Your system/application/libraries folder now looks like this:

system/applications/libraries -Doctrine -Doctrine.php -index.html
If you want, open your config/autoload.php file and autoload your Doctrine library.

<?php $autoload[‘libraries’] = array(‘doctrine’);

Creating your Doctrine CodeIgniter library¶

Now, here is what your Doctrine.php file should look like. Customize it to your needs.

<?php
use Doctrine\Common\ClassLoader,
    Doctrine\ORM\Configuration,
    Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager,
    Doctrine\Common\Cache\ArrayCache,
    Doctrine\DBAL\Logging\EchoSQLLogger;

class Doctrine {

  public $em = null;

  public function __construct()
  {
    // load database configuration from CodeIgniter
    require_once APPPATH.'config/database.php';

    // Set up class loading. You could use different autoloaders, provided by your favorite framework,
    // if you want to.
    require_once APPPATH.'libraries/Doctrine/Common/ClassLoader.php';

    $doctrineClassLoader = new ClassLoader('Doctrine',  APPPATH.'libraries');
    $doctrineClassLoader->register();
    $entitiesClassLoader = new ClassLoader('models', rtrim(APPPATH, "/" ));
    $entitiesClassLoader->register();
    $proxiesClassLoader = new ClassLoader('Proxies', APPPATH.'models/proxies');
    $proxiesClassLoader->register();

    // Set up caches
    $config = new Configuration;
    $cache = new ArrayCache;
    $config->setMetadataCacheImpl($cache);
    $driverImpl = $config->newDefaultAnnotationDriver(array(APPPATH.'models/Entities'));
    $config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driverImpl);
    $config->setQueryCacheImpl($cache);

    $config->setQueryCacheImpl($cache);

    // Proxy configuration
    $config->setProxyDir(APPPATH.'/models/proxies');
    $config->setProxyNamespace('Proxies');

    // Set up logger
    $logger = new EchoSQLLogger;
    $config->setSQLLogger($logger);

    $config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses( TRUE );

    // Database connection information
    $connectionOptions = array(
        'driver' => 'pdo_mysql',
        'user' =>     $db['default']['username'],
        'password' => $db['default']['password'],
        'host' =>     $db['default']['hostname'],
        'dbname' =>   $db['default']['database']
    );

    // Create EntityManager
    $this->em = EntityManager::create($connectionOptions, $config);
  }
}

Please note that this is a development configuration; for a production system you’ll want to use a real caching system like APC, get rid of EchoSqlLogger, and turn off autoGenerateProxyClasses.

For more details, consult the Doctrine 2 Configuration documentation.

Now to use it¶

Whenever you need a reference to the entity manager inside one of your controllers, views, or models you can do this:

<?php
$em = $this->doctrine->em;

That’s all there is to it. Once you get the reference to your EntityManager do your Doctrine 2.0 voodoo as normal.

Note: If you do not choose to autoload the Doctrine library, you will need to put this line before you get a reference to it:

<?php
$this->load->library('doctrine');

Good luck!

Keeping your Modules independent¶

New in version 2.2.

One of the goals of using modules is to create discreet units of functionality that do not have many (if any) dependencies, allowing you to use that functionality in other applications without including unnecessary items.

Doctrine 2.2 includes a new utility called the ResolveTargetEntityListener, that functions by intercepting certain calls inside Doctrine and rewrite targetEntity parameters in your metadata mapping at runtime. It means that in your bundle you are able to use an interface or abstract class in your mappings and expect correct mapping to a concrete entity at runtime.

This functionality allows you to define relationships between different entities but not making them hard dependencies.

Background¶

In the following example, the situation is we have an InvoiceModule which provides invoicing functionality, and a CustomerModule that contains customer management tools. We want to keep these separated, because they can be used in other systems without each other, but for our application we want to use them together.

In this case, we have an Invoice entity with a relationship to a non-existent object, an InvoiceSubjectInterface. The goal is to get the ResolveTargetEntityListener to replace any mention of the interface with a real object that implements that interface.

Set up¶

We’re going to use the following basic entities (which are incomplete for brevity) to explain how to set up and use the RTEL.

A Customer entity

// src/Acme/AppModule/Entity/Customer.php

namespace Acme\AppModule\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Acme\CustomerModule\Entity\Customer as BaseCustomer;
use Acme\InvoiceModule\Model\InvoiceSubjectInterface;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="customer")
 */
class Customer extends BaseCustomer implements InvoiceSubjectInterface
{
    // In our example, any methods defined in the InvoiceSubjectInterface
    // are already implemented in the BaseCustomer
}

An Invoice entity

// src/Acme/InvoiceModule/Entity/Invoice.php

namespace Acme\InvoiceModule\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping AS ORM;
use Acme\InvoiceModule\Model\InvoiceSubjectInterface;

/**
 * Represents an Invoice.
 *
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="invoice")
 */
class Invoice
{
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Acme\InvoiceModule\Model\InvoiceSubjectInterface")
     * @var InvoiceSubjectInterface
     */
    protected $subject;
}

An InvoiceSubjectInterface

// src/Acme/InvoiceModule/Model/InvoiceSubjectInterface.php

namespace Acme\InvoiceModule\Model;

/**
 * An interface that the invoice Subject object should implement.
 * In most circumstances, only a single object should implement
 * this interface as the ResolveTargetEntityListener can only
 * change the target to a single object.
 */
interface InvoiceSubjectInterface
{
    // List any additional methods that your InvoiceModule
    // will need to access on the subject so that you can
    // be sure that you have access to those methods.

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getName();
}

Next, we need to configure the listener. Add this to the area you set up Doctrine. You must set this up in the way outlined below, otherwise you can not be guaranteed that the targetEntity resolution will occur reliably:

$evm = new \Doctrine\Common\EventManager;

$rtel = new \Doctrine\ORM\Tools\ResolveTargetEntityListener;
$rtel->addResolveTargetEntity('Acme\\InvoiceModule\\Model\\InvoiceSubjectInterface', 'Acme\\CustomerModule\\Entity\\Customer', array());

// Add the ResolveTargetEntityListener
$evm->addEventSubscriber($rtel);

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

Final Thoughts¶

With the ResolveTargetEntityListener, we are able to decouple our bundles, keeping them usable by themselves, but still being able to define relationships between different objects. By using this method, I’ve found my bundles end up being easier to maintain independently.

SQL-Table Prefixes¶

This recipe is intended as an example of implementing a loadClassMetadata listener to provide a Table Prefix option for your application. The method used below is not a hack, but fully integrates into the Doctrine system, all SQL generated will include the appropriate table prefix.

In most circumstances it is desirable to separate different applications into individual databases, but in certain cases, it may be beneficial to have a table prefix for your Entities to separate them from other vendor products in the same database.

Implementing the listener¶

The listener in this example has been set up with the DoctrineExtensions namespace. You create this file in your library/DoctrineExtensions directory, but will need to set up appropriate autoloaders.

<?php

namespace DoctrineExtensions;
use \Doctrine\ORM\Event\LoadClassMetadataEventArgs;

class TablePrefix
{
    protected $prefix = '';

    public function __construct($prefix)
    {
        $this->prefix = (string) $prefix;
    }

    public function loadClassMetadata(LoadClassMetadataEventArgs $eventArgs)
    {
        $classMetadata = $eventArgs->getClassMetadata();
        $classMetadata->setTableName($this->prefix . $classMetadata->getTableName());
        foreach ($classMetadata->getAssociationMappings() as $fieldName => $mapping) {
            if ($mapping['type'] == \Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadataInfo::MANY_TO_MANY) {
                $mappedTableName = $classMetadata->associationMappings[$fieldName]['joinTable']['name'];
                $classMetadata->associationMappings[$fieldName]['joinTable']['name'] = $this->prefix . $mappedTableName;
            }
        }
    }

}

Telling the EntityManager about our listener¶

A listener of this type must be set up before the EntityManager has been initialised, otherwise an Entity might be created or cached before the prefix has been set.

Note

If you set this listener up, be aware that you will need to clear your caches and drop then recreate your database schema.

<?php

// $connectionOptions and $config set earlier

$evm = new \Doctrine\Common\EventManager;

// Table Prefix
$tablePrefix = new \DoctrineExtensions\TablePrefix('prefix_');
$evm->addEventListener(\Doctrine\ORM\Events::loadClassMetadata, $tablePrefix);

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

Strategy-Pattern¶

This recipe will give you a short introduction on how to design similar entities without using expensive (i.e. slow) inheritance but with not more than * the well-known strategy pattern * event listeners

Scenario / Problem¶

Given a Content-Management-System, we probably want to add / edit some so-called “blocks” and “panels”. What are they for?

A block might be a registration form, some text content, a table with information. A good example might also be a small calendar.
A panel is by definition a block that can itself contain blocks. A good example for a panel might be a sidebar box: You could easily add a small calendar into it.

So, in this scenario, when building your CMS, you will surely add lots of blocks and panels to your pages and you will find yourself highly uncomfortable because of the following:

Every existing page needs to know about the panels it contains - therefore, you’ll have an association to your panels. But if you’ve got several types of panels - what do you do? Add an association to every panel-type? This wouldn’t be flexible. You might be tempted to add an AbstractPanelEntity and an AbstractBlockEntity that use class inheritance. Your page could then only confer to the AbstractPanelType and Doctrine 2 would do the rest for you, i.e. load the right entities. But - you’ll for sure have lots of panels and blocks, and even worse, you’d have to edit the discriminator map manually every time you or another developer implements a new block / entity. This would tear down any effort of modular programming.

Therefore, we need something that’s far more flexible.

Solution¶

The solution itself is pretty easy. We will have one base class that will be loaded via the page and that has specific behaviour - a Block class might render the front-end and even the backend, for example. Now, every block that you’ll write might look different or need different data - therefore, we’ll offer an API to these methods but internally, we use a strategy that exactly knows what to do.

First of all, we need to make sure that we have an interface that contains every needed action. Such actions would be rendering the front-end or the backend, solving dependencies (blocks that are supposed to be placed in the sidebar could refuse to be placed in the middle of your page, for example).

Such an interface could look like this:

<?php
/**
 * This interface defines the basic actions that a block / panel needs to support.
 *
 * Every blockstrategy is *only* responsible for rendering a block and declaring some basic
 * support, but *not* for updating its configuration etc. For this purpose, use controllers
 * and models.
 */
interface BlockStrategyInterface {
    /**
     * This could configure your entity
     */
    public function setConfig(Config\EntityConfig $config);

    /**
     * Returns the config this strategy is configured with.
     * @return Core\Model\Config\EntityConfig
     */
    public function getConfig();

    /**
     * Set the view object.
     * @param  \Zend_View_Interface $view
     * @return \Zend_View_Helper_Interface
     */
    public function setView(\Zend_View_Interface $view);

    /**
     * @return \Zend_View_Interface
     */
    public function getView();

    /**
     * Renders this strategy. This method will be called when the user
     * displays the site.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function renderFrontend();

    /**
     * Renders the backend of this block. This method will be called when
     * a user tries to reconfigure this block instance.
     *
     * Most of the time, this method will return / output a simple form which in turn
     * calls some controllers.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function renderBackend();

    /**
     * Returns all possible types of panels this block can be stacked onto
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getRequiredPanelTypes();

    /**
     * Determines whether a Block is able to use a given type or not
     * @param string $typeName The typename
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function canUsePanelType($typeName);

    public function setBlockEntity(AbstractBlock $block);

    public function getBlockEntity();
}

As you can see, we have a method “setBlockEntity” which ties a potential strategy to an object of type AbstractBlock. This type will simply define the basic behaviour of our blocks and could potentially look something like this:

<?php
/**
 * This is the base class for both Panels and Blocks.
 * It shouldn't be extended by your own blocks - simply write a strategy!
 */
abstract class AbstractBlock {
    /**
     * The id of the block item instance
     * This is a doctrine field, so you need to setup generation for it
     * @var integer
     */
    private $id;

    // Add code for relation to the parent panel, configuration objects, ....

    /**
     * This var contains the classname of the strategy
     * that is used for this blockitem. (This string (!) value will be persisted by Doctrine 2)
     *
     * This is a doctrine field, so make sure that you use an @column annotation or setup your
     * yaml or xml files correctly
     * @var string
     */
    protected $strategyClassName;

    /**
     * This var contains an instance of $this->blockStrategy. Will not be persisted by Doctrine 2.
     *
     * @var BlockStrategyInterface
     */
    protected $strategyInstance;

    /**
     * Returns the strategy that is used for this blockitem.
     *
     * The strategy itself defines how this block can be rendered etc.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getStrategyClassName() {
        return $this->strategyClassName;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the instantiated strategy
     *
     * @return BlockStrategyInterface
     */
    public function getStrategyInstance() {
        return $this->strategyInstance;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the strategy this block / panel should work as. Make sure that you've used
     * this method before persisting the block!
     *
     * @param BlockStrategyInterface $strategy
     */
    public function setStrategy(BlockStrategyInterface $strategy) {
        $this->strategyInstance  = $strategy;
        $this->strategyClassName = get_class($strategy);
        $strategy->setBlockEntity($this);
    }

Now, the important point is that $strategyClassName is a Doctrine 2 field, i.e. Doctrine will persist this value. This is only the class name of your strategy and not an instance!

Finishing your strategy pattern, we hook into the Doctrine postLoad event and check whether a block has been loaded. If so, you will initialize it - i.e. get the strategies classname, create an instance of it and set it via setStrategyBlock().

This might look like this:

<?php
use \Doctrine\ORM,
    \Doctrine\Common;

/**
 * The BlockStrategyEventListener will initialize a strategy after the
 * block itself was loaded.
 */
class BlockStrategyEventListener implements Common\EventSubscriber {

    protected $view;

    public function __construct(\Zend_View_Interface $view) {
        $this->view = $view;
    }

    public function getSubscribedEvents() {
       return array(ORM\Events::postLoad);
    }

    public function postLoad(ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs $args) {
        $blockItem = $args->getEntity();

        // Both blocks and panels are instances of Block\AbstractBlock
        if ($blockItem instanceof Block\AbstractBlock) {
            $strategy  = $blockItem->getStrategyClassName();
            $strategyInstance = new $strategy();
            if (null !== $blockItem->getConfig()) {
                $strategyInstance->setConfig($blockItem->getConfig());
            }
            $strategyInstance->setView($this->view);
            $blockItem->setStrategy($strategyInstance);
        }
    }
}

In this example, even some variables are set - like a view object or a specific configuration object.

Validation of Entities¶

Section author: Benjamin Eberlei <kontakt@beberlei.de>

Doctrine 2 does not ship with any internal validators, the reason being that we think all the frameworks out there already ship with quite decent ones that can be integrated into your Domain easily. What we offer are hooks to execute any kind of validation.

Note

You don’t need to validate your entities in the lifecycle events. Its only one of many options. Of course you can also perform validations in value setters or any other method of your entities that are used in your code.

Entities can register lifecycle event methods with Doctrine that are called on different occasions. For validation we would need to hook into the events called before persisting and updating. Even though we don’t support validation out of the box, the implementation is even simpler than in Doctrine 1 and you will get the additional benefit of being able to re-use your validation in any other part of your domain.

Say we have an Order with several OrderLine instances. We never want to allow any customer to order for a larger sum than he is allowed to:

<?php
class Order
{
    public function assertCustomerAllowedBuying()
    {
        $orderLimit = $this->customer->getOrderLimit();

        $amount = 0;
        foreach ($this->orderLines AS $line) {
            $amount += $line->getAmount();
        }

        if ($amount > $orderLimit) {
            throw new CustomerOrderLimitExceededException();
        }
    }
}

Now this is some pretty important piece of business logic in your code, enforcing it at any time is important so that customers with a unknown reputation don’t owe your business too much money.

We can enforce this constraint in any of the metadata drivers. First Annotations:

<?php
/**
 * @Entity
 * @HasLifecycleCallbacks
 */
class Order
{
    /**
     * @PrePersist @PreUpdate
     */
    public function assertCustomerAllowedBuying() {}
}

In XML Mappings:

<doctrine-mapping>
    <entity name="Order">
        <lifecycle-callbacks>
            <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="assertCustomerallowedBuying" />
            <lifecycle-callback type="preUpdate" method="assertCustomerallowedBuying" />
        </lifecycle-callbacks>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

YAML needs some little change yet, to allow multiple lifecycle events for one method, this will happen before Beta 1 though.

Now validation is performed whenever you call EntityManager#persist($order) or when you call EntityManager#flush() and an order is about to be updated. Any Exception that happens in the lifecycle callbacks will be cached by the EntityManager and the current transaction is rolled back.

Of course you can do any type of primitive checks, not null, email-validation, string size, integer and date ranges in your validation callbacks.

<?php
class Order
{
    /**
     * @PrePersist @PreUpdate
     */
    public function validate()
    {
        if (!($this->plannedShipDate instanceof DateTime)) {
            throw new ValidateException();
        }

        if ($this->plannedShipDate->format('U') < time()) {
            throw new ValidateException();
        }

        if ($this->customer == null) {
            throw new OrderRequiresCustomerException();
        }
    }
}

What is nice about lifecycle events is, you can also re-use the methods at other places in your domain, for example in combination with your form library. Additionally there is no limitation in the number of methods you register on one particular event, i.e. you can register multiple methods for validation in “PrePersist” or “PreUpdate” or mix and share them in any combinations between those two events.

There is no limit to what you can and can’t validate in “PrePersist” and “PreUpdate” as long as you don’t create new entity instances. This was already discussed in the previous blog post on the Versionable extension, which requires another type of event called “onFlush”.

Working with DateTime Instances¶

There are many nitty gritty details when working with PHPs DateTime instances. You have know their inner workings pretty well not to make mistakes with date handling. This cookbook entry holds several interesting pieces of information on how to work with PHP DateTime instances in Doctrine 2.

DateTime changes are detected by Reference¶

When calling EntityManager#flush() Doctrine computes the changesets of all the currently managed entities and saves the differences to the database. In case of object properties (@Column(type=”datetime”) or @Column(type=”object”)) these comparisons are always made BY REFERENCE. That means the following change will NOT be saved into the database:

<?php
/** @Entity */
class Article
{
    /** @Column(type="datetime") */
    private $updated;

    public function setUpdated()
    {
        // will NOT be saved in the database
        $this->updated->modify("now");
    }
}

The way to go would be:

<?php
class Article
{
    public function setUpdated()
    {
        // WILL be saved in the database
        $this->updated = new \DateTime("now");
    }
}

Default Timezone Gotcha¶

By default Doctrine assumes that you are working with a default timezone. Each DateTime instance that is created by Doctrine will be assigned the timezone that is currently the default, either through the date.timezone ini setting or by calling date_default_timezone_set().

This is very important to handle correctly if your application runs on different serves or is moved from one to another server (with different timezone settings). You have to make sure that the timezone is the correct one on all this systems.

Handling different Timezones with the DateTime Type¶

If you first come across the requirement to save different you are still optimistic to manage this mess, however let me crush your expectations fast. There is not a single database out there (supported by Doctrine 2) that supports timezones correctly. Correctly here means that you can cover all the use-cases that can come up with timezones. If you don’t believe me you should read up on Storing DateTime in Databases.

The problem is simple. Not a single database vendor saves the timezone, only the differences to UTC. However with frequent daylight saving and political timezone changes you can have a UTC offset that moves in different offset directions depending on the real location.

The solution for this dilemma is simple. Don’t use timezones with DateTime and Doctrine 2. However there is a workaround that even allows correct date-time handling with timezones:

Always convert any DateTime instance to UTC.
Only set Timezones for displaying purposes
Save the Timezone in the Entity for persistence.

Say we have an application for an international postal company and employees insert events regarding postal-package around the world, in their current timezones. To determine the exact time an event occurred means to save both the UTC time at the time of the booking and the timezone the event happened in.

<?php

namespace DoctrineExtensions\DBAL\Types;

use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\ConversionException;

class UTCDateTimeType extends DateTimeType
{
    static private $utc = null;

    public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        if ($value === null) {
            return null;
        }


        return $value->format($platform->getDateTimeFormatString(),
            (self::$utc) ? self::$utc : (self::$utc = new \DateTimeZone('UTC'))
        );
    }

    public function convertToPHPValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        if ($value === null) {
            return null;
        }

        $val = \DateTime::createFromFormat(
            $platform->getDateTimeFormatString(),
            $value,
            (self::$utc) ? self::$utc : (self::$utc = new \DateTimeZone('UTC'))
        );
        if (!$val) {
            throw ConversionException::conversionFailed($value, $this->getName());
        }
        return $val;
    }
}

This database type makes sure that every DateTime instance is always saved in UTC, relative to the current timezone that the passed DateTime instance has. To be able to transform these values back into their real timezone you have to save the timezone in a separate field of the entity requiring timezoned datetimes:

<?php
namespace Shipping;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Event
{
    /** @Column(type="datetime") */
    private $created;

    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $timezone;

    /**
     * @var bool
     */
    private $localized = false;

    public function __construct(\DateTime $createDate)
    {
        $this->localized = true;
        $this->created = $createDate;
        $this->timezone = $createDate->getTimeZone()->getName();
    }

    public function getCreated()
    {
        if (!$this->localized) {
            $this->created->setTimeZone(new \DateTimeZone($this->timezone));
        }
        return $this->created;
    }
}

This snippet makes use of the previously discussed “changeset by reference only” property of objects. That means a new DateTime will only be used during updating if the reference changes between retrieval and flush operation. This means we can easily go and modify the instance by setting the previous local timezone.

Mysql Enums¶

The type system of Doctrine 2 consists of flyweights, which means there is only one instance of any given type. Additionally types do not contain state. Both assumptions make it rather complicated to work with the Enum Type of MySQL that is used quite a lot by developers.

When using Enums with a non-tweaked Doctrine 2 application you will get errors from the Schema-Tool commands due to the unknown database type “enum”. By default Doctrine does not map the MySQL enum type to a Doctrine type. This is because Enums contain state (their allowed values) and Doctrine types don’t.

This cookbook entry shows two possible solutions to work with MySQL enums. But first a word of warning. The MySQL Enum type has considerable downsides:

Adding new values requires to rebuild the whole table, which can take hours depending on the size.
Enums are ordered in the way the values are specified, not in their “natural” order.
Enums validation mechanism for allowed values is not necessarily good, specifying invalid values leads to an empty enum for the default MySQL error settings. You can easily replicate the “allow only some values” requirement in your Doctrine entities.

Solution 1: Mapping to Varchars¶

You can map ENUMs to varchars. You can register MySQL ENUMs to map to Doctrine varchars. This way Doctrine always resolves ENUMs to Doctrine varchars. It will even detect this match correctly when using SchemaTool update commands.

<?php
$conn = $em->getConnection();
$conn->getDatabasePlatform()->registerDoctrineTypeMapping('enum', 'string');

In this case you have to ensure that each varchar field that is an enum in the database only gets passed the allowed values. You can easily enforce this in your entities:

<?php
/** @Entity */
class Article
{
    const STATUS_VISIBLE = 'visible';
    const STATUS_INVISIBLE = 'invisible';

    /** @Column(type="string") */
    private $status;

    public function setStatus($status)
    {
        if (!in_array($status, array(self::STATUS_VISIBLE, self::STATUS_INVISIBLE))) {
            throw new \InvalidArgumentException("Invalid status");
        }
        $this->status = $status;
    }
}

If you want to actively create enums through the Doctrine Schema-Tool by using the columnDefinition attribute.

<?php
/** @Entity */
class Article
{
    /** @Column(type="string", columnDefinition="ENUM('visible', 'invisible')") */
    private $status;
}

In this case however Schema-Tool update will have a hard time not to request changes for this column on each call.

Solution 2: Defining a Type¶

You can make a stateless ENUM type by creating a type class for each unique set of ENUM values. For example for the previous enum type:

<?php
namespace MyProject\DBAL;

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform;

class EnumVisibilityType extends Type
{
    const ENUM_VISIBILITY = 'enumvisibility';
    const STATUS_VISIBLE = 'visible';
    const STATUS_INVISIBLE = 'invisible';

    public function getSqlDeclaration(array $fieldDeclaration, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return "ENUM('visible', 'invisible') COMMENT '(DC2Type:enumvisibility)'";
    }

    public function convertToPHPValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return $value;
    }

    public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        if (!in_array($value, array(self::STATUS_VISIBLE, self::STATUS_INVISIBLE))) {
            throw new \InvalidArgumentException("Invalid status");
        }
        return $value;
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return self::ENUM_VISIBILITY;
    }
}

You can register this type with Type::addType('enumvisibility', 'MyProject\DBAL\EnumVisibilityType');. Then in your entity you can just use this type:

<?php
/** @Entity */
class Article
{
    /** @Column(type="enumvisibility") */
    private $status;
}

You can generalize this approach easily to create a base class for enums:

<?php
namespace MyProject\DBAL;

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform;

abstract class EnumType extends Type
{
    protected $name;
    protected $values = array();

    public function getSqlDeclaration(array $fieldDeclaration, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        $values = array_map(function($val) { return "'".$val."'"; }, $this->values);

        return "ENUM(".implode(", ", $values).") COMMENT '(DC2Type:".$this->name.")'";
    }

    public function convertToPHPValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return $value;
    }

    public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        if (!in_array($value, $this->values)) {
            throw new \InvalidArgumentException("Invalid '".$this->name."' value.");
        }
        return $value;
    }

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

With this base class you can define an enum as easily as:

<?php
namespace MyProject\DBAL;

class EnumVisibilityType extends EnumType
{
    protected $name = 'enumvisibility';
    protected $values = array('visible', 'invisible');
}

Advanced field value conversion using custom mapping types¶

Section author: Jan Sorgalla <jsorgalla@googlemail.com>

When creating entities, you sometimes have the need to transform field values before they are saved to the database. In Doctrine you can use Custom Mapping Types to solve this (see: Custom Mapping Types).

There are several ways to achieve this: converting the value inside the Type class, converting the value on the database-level or a combination of both.

This article describes the third way by implementing the MySQL specific column type Point.

The Point type is part of the Spatial extension of MySQL and enables you to store a single location in a coordinate space by using x and y coordinates. You can use the Point type to store a longitude/latitude pair to represent a geographic location.

The entity¶

We create a simple entity with a field $point which holds a value object Point representing the latitude and longitude of the position.

The entity class:

<?php

namespace Geo\Entity;

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class Location
{
    /**
     * @Column(type="point")
     *
     * @var \Geo\ValueObject\Point
     */
    private $point;

    /**
     * @Column(type="string")
     *
     * @var string
     */
    private $address;

    /**
     * @param \Geo\ValueObject\Point $point
     */
    public function setPoint(\Geo\ValueObject\Point $point)
    {
        $this->point = $point;
    }

    /**
     * @return \Geo\ValueObject\Point
     */
    public function getPoint()
    {
        return $this->point;
    }

    /**
     * @param string $address
     */
    public function setAddress($address)
    {
        $this->address = $address;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getAddress()
    {
        return $this->address;
    }
}

We use the custom type point in the @Column docblock annotation of the $point field. We will create this custom mapping type in the next chapter.

The point class:

<?php

namespace Geo\ValueObject;

class Point
{

    /**
     * @param float $latitude
     * @param float $longitude
     */
    public function __construct($latitude, $longitude)
    {
        $this->latitude  = $latitude;
        $this->longitude = $longitude;
    }

    /**
     * @return float
     */
    public function getLatitude()
    {
        return $this->latitude;
    }

    /**
     * @return float
     */
    public function getLongitude()
    {
        return $this->longitude;
    }
}

The mapping type¶

Now we’re going to create the point type and implement all required methods.

<?php

namespace Geo\Types;

use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\AbstractPlatform;

use Geo\ValueObject\Point;

class PointType extends Type
{
    const POINT = 'point';

    public function getName()
    {
        return self::POINT;
    }

    public function getSqlDeclaration(array $fieldDeclaration, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return 'POINT';
    }

    public function convertToPHPValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        list($longitude, $latitude) = sscanf($value, 'POINT(%f %f)');

        return new Point($latitude, $longitude);
    }

    public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        if ($value instanceof Point) {
            $value = sprintf('POINT(%F %F)', $value->getLongitude(), $value->getLatitude());
        }

        return $value;
    }

    public function canRequireSQLConversion()
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function convertToPHPValueSQL($sqlExpr, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return sprintf('AsText(%s)', $sqlExpr);
    }

    public function convertToDatabaseValueSQL($sqlExpr, AbstractPlatform $platform)
    {
        return sprintf('PointFromText(%s)', $sqlExpr);
    }
}

We do a 2-step conversion here. In the first step, we convert the Point object into a string representation before saving to the database (in the convertToDatabaseValue method) and back into an object after fetching the value from the database (in the convertToPHPValue method).

The format of the string representation format is called Well-known text (WKT). The advantage of this format is, that it is both human readable and parsable by MySQL.

Internally, MySQL stores geometry values in a binary format that is not identical to the WKT format. So, we need to let MySQL transform the WKT representation into its internal format.

This is where the convertToPHPValueSQL and convertToDatabaseValueSQL methods come into play.

This methods wrap a sql expression (the WKT representation of the Point) into MySQL functions PointFromText and AsText which convert WKT strings to and from the internal format of MySQL.

Note

When using DQL queries, the convertToPHPValueSQL and convertToDatabaseValueSQL methods only apply to identification variables and path expressions in SELECT clauses. Expressions in WHERE clauses are not wrapped!

If you want to use Point values in WHERE clauses, you have to implement a user defined function for PointFromText.

Example usage¶

<?php

// Bootstrapping stuff...
// $em = \Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager::create($connectionOptions, $config);

// Setup custom mapping type
use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type;

Type::addType('point', 'Geo\Types\Point');
$em->getConnection()->getDatabasePlatform()->registerDoctrineTypeMapping('point', 'point');

// Store a Location object
use Geo\Entity\Location;
use Geo\ValueObject\Point;

$location = new Location();

$location->setAddress('1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA');
$location->setPoint(new Point(37.4220761, -122.0845187));

$em->persist($location);
$em->flush();
$em->clear();

// Fetch the Location object
$query = $em->createQuery("SELECT l FROM Geo\Entity\Location WHERE l.address = '1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA'");
$location = $query->getSingleResult();

/* @var Geo\ValueObject\Point */
$point = $location->getPoint();

Entities in the Session¶

There are several use-cases to save entities in the session, for example:

User object
Multi-step forms

To achieve this with Doctrine you have to pay attention to some details to get this working.

Merging entity into an EntityManager¶

In Doctrine an entity objects has to be “managed” by an EntityManager to be updateable. Entities saved into the session are not managed in the next request anymore. This means that you have to register these entities with an EntityManager again if you want to change them or use them as part of references between other entities. You can achieve this by calling EntityManager#merge().

For a representative User object the code to get turn an instance from the session into a managed Doctrine object looks like this:

<?php
require_once 'bootstrap.php';
$em = GetEntityManager(); // creates an EntityManager

session_start();
if (isset($_SESSION['user']) && $_SESSION['user'] instanceof User) {
    $user = $_SESSION['user'];
    $user = $em->merge($user);
}

Note

A frequent mistake is not to get the merged user object from the return value of EntityManager#merge(). The entity object passed to merge is not necessarily the same object that is returned from the method.

Serializing entity into the session¶

Entities that are serialized into the session normally contain references to other entities as well. Think of the user entity has a reference to his articles, groups, photos or many other different entities. If you serialize this object into the session then you don’t want to serialize the related entities as well. This is why you should call EntityManager#detach() on this object or implement the __sleep() magic method on your entity.

<?php
require_once 'bootstrap.php';
$em = GetEntityManager(); // creates an EntityManager

$user = $em->find("User", 1);
$em->detach($user);
$_SESSION['user'] = $user;

Note

When you called detach on your objects they get “unmanaged” with that entity manager. This means you cannot use them as part of write operations during EntityManager#flush() anymore in this request.

Navigation

Welcome to Doctrine 2 ORM’s documentation!¶

Getting Help¶

Getting Started¶

Mapping Objects onto a Database¶

Working with Objects¶

Advanced Topics¶

Tutorials¶

Cookbook¶

Welcome to Doctrine 2 ORM’s documentation!¶

Tutorials¶

Getting Started with Doctrine¶

Guide Assumptions¶

What is Doctrine?¶

What are Entities?¶

An Example Model: Bug Tracker¶

Setup Project¶

Obtaining the EntityManager¶

Generating the Database Schema¶

Starting with the Product¶

Adding Bug and User Entities¶

Implementing more Requirements¶

Queries for Application Use-Cases¶

List of Bugs¶

Array Hydration of the Bug List¶

Find by Primary Key¶

Dashboard of the User¶

Number of Bugs¶

Updating Entities¶

Entity Repositories¶

Conclusion¶

Getting Started: Database First¶

Getting Started: Model First¶

Working with Indexed Associations¶

Mapping Indexed Associations¶

Querying indexed associations¶

Outlook into the Future¶

Extra Lazy Associations¶

Enabling Extra-Lazy Associations¶

Composite and Foreign Keys as Primary Key¶

General Considerations¶

Primitive Types only¶

Identity through foreign Entities¶

Use-Case 1: Dynamic Attributes¶

Use-Case 2: Simple Derived Identity¶

Use-Case 3: Join-Table with Metadata¶

Performance Considerations¶

Ordering To-Many Associations¶

Override Field Association Mappings In Subclasses¶

Pagination¶

Reference Guide¶

Architecture¶

Using an Object-Relational Mapper¶

Requirements¶

Doctrine 2 Packages¶

The Common Package¶

The DBAL Package¶

The ORM Package¶

Terminology¶

Entities¶

Entity states¶

Persistent fields¶

Serializing entities¶

The EntityManager¶

Transactional write-behind¶

The Unit of Work¶

Installation¶

Installation and Configuration¶

Class loading¶

Obtaining an EntityManager¶

Setting up the Commandline Tool¶

Frequently Asked Questions¶

Database Schema¶

How do I set the charset and collation for MySQL tables?¶

Entity Classes¶

I access a variable and its null, what is wrong?¶

How can I add default values to a column?¶

Mapping¶

Why do I get exceptions about unique constraint failures during $em->flush()?¶

Associations¶

Why do I get exceptions about unique constraint failures during `$em->flush()`?¶