Symfony2 form setting, unsetting associations - forms

Question

I have Company and Number entity which are related
/**
* #var Comapany
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Company", inversedBy="numbers", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="company", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true, onDelete="RESTRICT")
* #Assert\NotBlank(groups={"client"})
* #Assert\Valid()
*/
private $company;
/**
* #var Number[]
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Number", mappedBy="company", fetch="EXTRA_LAZY", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
* #Assert\Count(min="1")
*/
private $numbers;
I have created a form for creating and updating Company entity. This form should allow to set Number entities to it as well as unset them. This is how it looks rendered
And this is how it looks in code:
$builder
->add('name', 'text', [
'required' => false
])
->add('numbers', 'entity', [
'class' => 'AppBundle:Number',
'property' => 'number',
'placeholder' => '',
'required' => false,
'multiple' => true,
'query_builder' => function (EntityRepository $er) use ($builder) {
if ($builder->getData() && $id = $builder->getData()->getId()) {
return $er->createQueryBuilder('n')
->where('n.company is NULL')
->orWhere('n.company = :id')
->setParameter('id', $id);
}
return $er->createQueryBuilder('n')
->where('n.company is NULL');
}
]);
The problem is when creating new Company record, the form assigns Number entities, but the Number entities have property "company" which doesn't get assigned and so no relation is made. I have worked around this with form events:
$builder->addEventListener(FormEvents::SUBMIT, function (FormEvent $event) {
foreach ($event->getData()->getNumbers() as $number) {
$number->setCompany($event->getData());
}
});
Which works for creating record, however when updating I have another issue, since I remove Number associations I have no access to them and thus can't update them in database. I could again select all Number entities assigned to form, and then filter out which were assigned to company and which were not and then manually update them, but this feels dirty and I would like to work it out in a clean way.

Answer 1

Finally found solution, as is turns out it's quite well documented:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/form/form_collections.html
The changes I Had to make was:
1.Add by_reference property to entity form field: More information on that with an example: http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/form/form_collections.html#allowing-new-tags-with-the-prototype
Basically what I figured that without this options symfony2 form uses own means of adding associations, and with this option set it calls methods "addNumber" and "removeNumber" inside Entity in which I had to manually add inverse side "number" association which goes to 2nd change I had to make.
$builder
->add('name', 'text', [
'required' => false
])
->add('numbers', 'entity', [
'class' => 'AppBundle:Number',
'property' => 'number',
'placeholder' => '',
'required' => false,
'multiple' => true,
'by_reference' => false, //
'query_builder' => function (EntityRepository $er) use ($builder) {
if ($builder->getData() && $id = $builder->getData()->getId()) {
return $er->createQueryBuilder('n')
->where('n.company is NULL')
->orWhere('n.company = :id')
->setParameter('id', $id);
}
return $er->createQueryBuilder('n')
->where('n.company is NULL');
}
]);
2.I had explicitly set Inverse side association to owning side by calling method setComapany($this) from owning (Company Entity) side.
/**
* Add numbers
*
* #param \AppBundle\Entity\Number $numbers
* #return Company
*/
public function addNumber(\AppBundle\Entity\Number $numbers)
{
$numbers->setCompany($this); //!Important manually set association
$this->numbers[] = $numbers;
return $this;
}
These 2 changes are enough to make form automatically add associations. However with removing associations there's a little bit more.
3.Change I had to make to correctly unset associations was inside controller action itself: I had to save currently set associations inside new ArrayCollection variable, and after form validation manually go through each item in that collection checking if it exists after form was validated. Important note:
I had also manually unset inverse side association to owning side by calling:
"$number->setCompany(null);"
public function editAction(Request $request, Company $company)
{
$originalNumbers = new ArrayCollection();
foreach ($company->getNumbers() as $number) {
$originalNumbers->add($number);
}
$form = $this->createForm(new CompanyType(), $company);
$form->handleRequest($request);
if ($form->isValid()) {
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
foreach ($originalNumbers as $number) {
if (false === $company->getNumbers()->contains($number)) {
$company->getNumbers()->removeElement($number);
$number->setCompany(null); //!Important manually unset association
}
}
$em->persist($company);
$em->flush();
return $this->redirectToRoute('companies');
}
return $this->render('AppBundle:Company:form.html.twig', [
'form' => $form->createView()
]);
}
All of these steps are required to make this kind of logic function properly, luckily I was able to really good documentation for that.
PS. Note that I call
$em->persist($company);
$em->flush();
without persisting each "Number" Entity iterated inside loop which you can be seen in given Symfony2 documentation example, and which in this case would look like this:
$company->getNumbers()->removeElement($number);
$number->setCompany(null);
$em->persist($number);
This is because I setup Cascading Relations options inside my Entity class
/**
* #var Number[]
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Number", mappedBy="company", fetch="EXTRA_LAZY", cascade={"persist", "remove"})
* #Assert\Count(min="1")
*/
private $numbers;
My advise for anyone struggling with this is to read whole http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/form/form_collections.html thoroughly especially sections marked by special signs ✎✚❗☀💡