Filter sub entity in doctrine - php

Question

I have two entities that have a one to many relation.
There is a project:
class Project
{
// ...
/**
* #var \Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection|Template[]
*
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Template", mappedBy="project")
*/
private $templates;
// ...
}
And I have templates which might be limited to certain users:
class Template
{
/**
* #var Project
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Project", inversedBy="templates")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(referencedColumnName="project_id", nullable=false)
*/
private $projectId;
/**
* #var array|null
*
* #ORM\Column(type="simple_array", nullable=true)
*/
private $userIds;
// ...
}
I now want to get all the projects. But the templates variable of each project should only have the templates that have either userIds NULL or the userId of the current user.
In my repository I already tried the following:
public function findForUser(int $userId): array
{
$qb = $this->entityManager->createQueryBuilder();
$qb->select('p')
->from(Project::class, 'p')
->leftJoin(Template::class, 't', Join::WITH, 't.project = p.projectId')
->where(
$qb->expr()
->isNull('t.userIds')
)
->orWhere('FIND_IN_SET(:userId, t.userIds) > 0');
$qb->setParameter(':userId', $userId);
return $qb->getQuery()
->execute();
}
But when I call getTemplates() I still have all templates in it even the ones the user is not allowed to see.
I also tried instead of ->select('p') to use ->select('p, t') as I hoped doctrine would then already fill the templates field with the selected templates but instead it then returns a mixed array of Templates and Projects.

Answer 1

I think that you entity schema is not quite optimised for this kind of operation.
You must not save the IDs of the Users in a simple array, but instead, use a ManyToMany relation :
class Template
{
// ...
/**
* #var User[]|Collection
*
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="templates")
*/
private $users;
}
Then, the dql query should look something like that :
public function findForUser(User $user): array
{
$qb = $this->entityManager->createQueryBuilder();
$qb->select('p')
->from(Project::class, 'p')
->leftJoin(Template::class, 't', Join::WITH, 't.project = p.projectId')
->leftJoin(User::class, 'u', Join::WITH, 't.users = u.id')
->where('COUNT(t.users) = 0')
->orWhere('u = :user');
$qb->setParameter(':user', $user);
return $qb->getQuery()
->execute();
}