How does Doctrine call a function that does not exist? - php

Question

I'm trying to find out why a field is not saving. It's submitted fine and the page reloads with the same value, but it's not stored in the database. I have this in my project
$contact = new Contact($_POST);
$contact->Save();
However, the Save() function doesn't exist in the Contact class, and it doesn't extend anything! How is it able to call a function that doesn't exist? I don't believe PHP has monkeypatching. I know the function is called because I added print_r($_POST) right above it.
<?php
namespace ArcaSolutions\CoreBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* Contact
*
* #ORM\Table(name="Contact")
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="ArcaSolutions\CoreBundle\Repository\ContactRepository")
* #ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
*/
class Contact
{
My new field is defined as
/**
* #var string
*
* #ORM\Column(name="timezone", type="string", length=50, nullable=true)
*/
private $timezone;
/**
* Set timezone
*
* #param string $timezone
* #return Contact
*/
public function setTimezone($timezone)
{
$this->timezone = $timezone;
return $this;
}
/**
* Get timezone
*
* #return string
*/
public function getTimezone()
{
return $this->timezone;
}
It's an eDirectory project based on Symfony 2.8 and PHP 5.6.27.

Answer 1

As Padam87 suggests in the comments, you seem to mix Doctrine 1 with Doctrine 2 syntax. Doctrine 1 uses the Active Record pattern, whereas Doctrine 2 uses the Data Mapper pattern. A nice explaination of the differences can be found here: https://www.culttt.com/2014/06/18/whats-difference-active-record-data-mapper/
A Doctrine 2 entity will never have a save() or similar method. To persist or retrieve entities, you will have to use the entity manager. If you use Symfony, the entity manager can be injected as a service into your controllers or other services.
Read the Doctrine docs on how to work with an entity manager to learn more.
By the way, whatever you’re trying by injecting the $_POST data into your entity – this is a very bad idea. You should first process this data in your controller or some validator and only fill entities with validated content. Also, when using Symfony, you’ll want to get the POST data through the Request object which is passed to your action if you reference it in the signature.
Here’s a stub for a controller which gets the entity manager injected as a dependency (you should also register it the controller as a service in your bundle’s services.yml) and gets the POST data from the Request object:
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
private $entityManager;
public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $entityManager)
{
$this->entityManager = $entityManager;
}
public function someAction(Request $request)
{
$data = $request->request->all();
// validate $data!!!
$contact = new Contact();
$contact->setSomeValue($data["value"]);
$this->entityManager->persist($contact);
$this->entityManager->flush();
return new Response("Ok", 200);
}
In Symfony, again, you could also inject an instance of Symfony\Component\Validator\Validator\ValidatorInterface and use Symfony’s validation component.

Answer 2

I found out why. There were two Contact classes and eDirectory was using the one in edirectory\web\classes\class_Contact.php. The other one I found was in edirectory\src\ArcaSolutions\CoreBundle\Entity\Contact.php. The one it really uses is defined as
class Contact extends Handle {
var $account_id;
...
function Save() {
$this->prepareToSave();
$dbObj = db_getDBObject(DEFAULT_DB,true);;
$sql = "UPDATE Contact SET"
. " updated = NOW(),"
. " first_name = $this->first_name,"
...
So it does have a Save() function.