Saving complex form data in zend framework using doctrine 2 - zend-framework

Question

Doctrine 2 integration into ZF seems to make simple things very hard and time consuming(At least for me).
I cant just give a submitted form array to doctrine to automatically map key/value pairs to doctrine entities and it gets very complicated if i have a many-to-many entity and submitted form has nested array.
In symfony, submitted form keys/values are easily and AUTOMATICALLY mapped and saved to doctrine tables. I don't know how to do that in ZF especially if I have "Many to Many" and/or "Many to One" doctrine entities and I have **nested form elements which need multi-level iteration.
I don't want to Set every entity explicitly and create every entity object manually**.
Pain would be alot less if i used ZF`s native database architecture.
I have done some coding and now its done half-automatically but is not very useful.

Answer 1

I think the best solution is to use PHP's Reflection API to inject/retrieve values from your entities (using smart get/set detection as well). I started a little library called ObjectSerializer to help with the process but never finished. That said, if you look at the logic contained in these two classes you might get a good idea where to start.

Answer 2

You should program this sort of logic into your models.
I usually add this sort of logic into my form, for example
class Application_Form_SomeModel extends Zend_Form
{
// the usual stuff
public function populateModel(\Entity\Model $model)
{
$model->setSomething($this->getValue('something'));
$subForm = $this->getSubForm('name');
$relatedModel = new \Entity\RelatedModel;
$relatedModel->setSomething($subForm->getValue('something'));
$model->getRelatedModels()->add($relatedModel);
// assuming the related model collection has cascade persist
// otherwise you'll need to pass in the entity manager to persist
// the new model
}
}
I do it this way due to the fact the form's elements are really only known to the form. This allows you to encapsulate everything to do with the form and its element names within the form without having to assume anything else knows this information.