saving embedded form (collection) Symfony2 - forms

Question

I am making an invoicing system with an embedded form. A form where you can add a date, choose a customer company from a dropdown list (-> customer is an entity) and add details to the invoice item (-> details is also an entity, with properties like price, amount,...) - with javascript. This works just fine, but at saving the form I get an error.
I have 3 entities: InvoicingCustomer, InvoiceItem, InvoiceItemDetail.
(Sorry; this is going to be a long post)
InvoicingCustomer.php (with properties like street, address,...) =
/**
* #ORM\Table(name="invoicing_customer")
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class InvoicingCustomer
{
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItem", mappedBy="customer")
*/
private $invoice;
public function __construct()
{ $this->invoice = new ArrayCollection();}
public function getInvoice()
{ return $this->invoice; }
public function getAllInvoices()
{
$invoices = $this->getInvoice()->toArray();
return $invoices;
}
/**
* #var integer
* #ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #var string
* #ORM\Column(name="company_name", type="string", length=50, nullable=false)
* #Assert\NotBlank()
*/
private $companyName;
//idem for next properties:
private $firstName;
private $lastName;
private $street;
private $number;
private $postalCode;
private $city;
}
And off course the getters and setters.
InvoiceItem.php =
/**
* #ORM\Table(name="invoicing_invoice_item")
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class InvoiceItem
{
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItemDetail", mappedBy="item_nr", cascade={"ALL"}, fetch="EAGER", orphanRemoval=true)
*/
private $item_detail;
public function __construct()
{ $this->item_detail = new ArrayCollection(); }
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function getItemDetail()
{ return $this->item_detail; }
/**
* #param mixed $item_detail
*/
public function setItemDetail(Collection $item_detail)
{
foreach ($item_detail as $v)
{
if (is_null($v->getId()))
{
$v->getId($this);
}
}
$this->item_detail = $item_detail;
}
public function addDetail(InvoiceItemDetail $detail){
$detail->$this->setItemDetail($this);
$this->detail[] = $detail;
return $this;
}
public function removeDetail(InvoiceItemDetail $detail){
//
}
/**
* #var integer
* #ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #var \DateTime
* #ORM\Column(name="date", type="date", nullable=false)
*/
private $date;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Invoicing\CustomerBundle\Entity\InvoicingCustomer", inversedBy="invoice")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(onDelete="CASCADE", nullable=false)
* #Assert\Type(type="Invoicing\CustomerBundle\Entity\InvoicingCustomer")
* #Assert\Valid()
*
*/
private $customer;
// here also getters and setters
}
InvoiceItemDetail.php =
/**
* #ORM\Table(name="invoicing_invoice_itemdetail")
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class InvoiceItemDetail
{
/**
* #var integer
* #ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #ORM\Column(name="description", type="text", length=200, nullable=false)
*/
private $description;
/**
* #var string
* #ORM\Column(name="price", type="decimal", precision=10, scale=0, nullable=false)
*/
private $price;
/**
* #var integer
* #ORM\Column(name="amount", type="decimal", precision=10, scale=0, nullable=false)
*/
private $amount;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItem", inversedBy="item_detail" )
* #ORM\JoinColumn(onDelete="CASCADE", nullable=false, name="item_nr_id", referencedColumnName="id")
* #Assert\Type(type="Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItem")
* #Assert\Valid()
*/
private $item_nr;
// + getters and setters
}
Then, I got the types.
InvoiceItemType.php =
class InvoiceItemType extends AbstractType
{
/**
* #param FormBuilderInterface $builder
* #param array $options
*/
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('date', 'date', array(
'format' => 'dd-MM-yyyy',
'empty_value' => array('year' => 'Year', 'month' => 'Month', 'day' => 'Day'),
'years' => range(date('Y') -1, date('Y')),
))
->add('customer', null, array(
'empty_value' => 'Choose a company',
'label' => 'Company',
'required' => true,
))
->add('item_detail', 'collection', array(
'type' => new InvoiceItemDetailType(),
'allow_add' => true,
'constraints' => new NotBlank(),
'by_reference' => false,
));
}
public function getName()
{ return 'invoiceitem'; }
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItem',
));
}
}
InvoicingCustomerType.php =
class InvoicingCustomerType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder->add('companyName', 'text');
}
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'Invoicing\CustomerBundle\Entity\InvoicingCustomer',
));
}
public function getName()
{ return 'customer'; }
}
InvoiceItemDetailType.php =
class InvoiceItemDetailType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('description', 'text')
->add('price', 'number', array(
'label' => 'Price - €',
))
->add('amount', 'number');
}
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItemDetail',
));
}
public function getName()
{ return 'detail'; }
}
In my controller I have this (InvoiceItemController.php):
/** InvoiceItem controller */
class InvoiceItemController extends Controller
{
/**
* Creates a new invoiceitem entity.
*/
public function createAction(Request $request)
{
$entity = new InvoiceItem();
$form = $this->createCreateForm($entity);
$form->handleRequest($request);
if ($form->isValid()) {
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
// hack to work around handleRequest not using class methods to populate data
foreach($entity->getItemDetail() as $detail){
foreach($detail as $i){
// if i didn't made a second loop, I get an error: "object could not be converted to string..."
$i->this->setItemNr($entity);
$em->persist($i);
}
}
$em->persist($entity);
$em->flush();
return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('invoiceitem_show', array('id' => $entity->getId())));
}
return $this->render('InvoicingBundle:InvoiceItem:new.html.twig', array(
'entity' => $entity,
'form' => $form->createView(),
));
}
}
In my twig it's just like:
{% block body -%}
<h1>Invoice item creation</h1>
{{ form(form) }}
{% endblock %}
Everything in the form is displayed good (and with javascript I can add several details to one invoice item). But when I submit the form, symfony throws an error:
An exception occurred while executing 'INSERT INTO invoicing_invoice_itemdetail (description, price, amount, item_nr_id) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)' with params ["test", 300, 1, null]:
SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1048 Column 'item_nr_id' cannot be null
I searched around on the docs of symfony (http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/form/form_collections.html ) and on stackoverflow (for example: Saving embedded collections ), but none of these give me the right solution.
I know this is a long post: I am sorry. But I don't know how to sort this problem out (+ I am new in learning symfony2 & new in asking questions here).

Answer 1

I believe your problem is in InvoiceItem entity. Try to create method addItemDetail (or maybe addInvoiceItemDetail) instead addDetail. You can also delete method setItemDetail and maybe you will see good explanation what method is Symfony looking for.
public function addItemDetail(InvoiceItemDetail $detail){
$detail->setItemNr($this);
$this->item_detail[] = $detail;
return $this;
}
And delete the hack from controller.
// hack to work around handleRequest not using class methods to populate data
foreach($entity->getItemDetail() as $detail){
foreach($detail as $i){
// if i didn't made a second loop, I get an error: "object could not be converted to string..."
$i->this->setItemNr($entity);
$em->persist($i);
}
}
I hope it helps but it is a little hard to answer this question without live code.

Answer 2

The concept of Symfony forms is that for relations you can also specify the related entity in the form type.
In your case, you didn't add InvoiceItemType to the Type ItemInvoiceDetail:
I would expect the following code in your InvoiceDetailType:
class InvoiceItemDetailType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('description', 'text')
->add('invoice_item', 'invoice_item', array('error_bubbling' => true, 'mapped' => true))
->add('price', 'number', array(
'label' => 'Price - €',
))
->add('amount', 'number');
}
public function setDefaultOptions(OptionsResolverInterface $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'Invoicing\InvoicingBundle\Entity\InvoiceItemDetail',
));
}
public function getName()
{ return 'detail'; }
Notice i set the type of the form element as invoice_item.
you can achieve that by defining it as a service:
service_name:
class: invoiceitemfullclasspath
arguments: []
tags:
- { name: form.type, alias: invoice_item }