Symfony - Update a unique OneToMany relation property - php

Question

A Company can have multiple emails and all emails have to be unique.
This my Entites for Company and CompanyEmail
CompanyEmail Entity:
/**
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="App\Repository\CompanyEmailRepository")
* #UniqueEntity("name")
*/
class CompanyEmail
{
/**
* #ORM\Id()
* #ORM\GeneratedValue()
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="string", length=128, unique=true)
* #Assert\Email()
*/
private $name;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Company", inversedBy="emails")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(nullable=false)
*/
private $company;
// ...
}
Company Entity:
/**
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="App\Repository\CompanyRepository")
*/
class Company
{
// ...
/**
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="App\Entity\CompanyEmail", mappedBy="company", orphanRemoval=true, cascade={"persist"})
* #Assert\Valid
*/
private $emails;
// ...
}
and I'm using an custom EmailsInputType that use this DataTransformer
class EmailArrayToStringTransformer implements DataTransformerInterface
{
public function transform($emails): string
{
return implode(', ', $emails);
}
public function reverseTransform($string): array
{
if ($string === '' || $string === null) {
return [];
}
$inputEmails = array_filter(array_unique(array_map('trim', explode(',', $string))));
$cEmails = [];
foreach($inputEmails as $email){
$cEmail = new CompanyEmail();
$cEmail->setName($email);
$cEmails[] = $cEmail;
}
return $cEmails;
}
}
and in the Controller a use this edit method
/**
* #Route("/edit/{id}", name="admin_company_edit", requirements={"id": "\d+"}, methods={"GET", "POST"})
*/
public function edit(Request $request, $id): Response
{
$entityManager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$company = $entityManager->getRepository(Company::class)->find($id);
$form = $this->createForm(CompanyType::class, $company);
$form->handleRequest($request);
if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
$entityManager->flush();
}
}
There is two problems with this code
1 - In the edit form when i try to keep an already saved email Symfony generate a validation error that tells that this email is already exits.
2 - When I remove the validation restriction from the code, Symfony thrown the database error "*Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry ... *"
What i should do to make my code work as expected !

Answer 1

The problem is right here
public function reverseTransform($string): array
{
[...]
foreach($inputEmails as $email){
$cEmail = new CompanyEmail();
[...]
}
[...]
}
You need to retrieve the email instead of creating new one.
So basically, inject a CompanyEmailRepository, try to find if email already exists (findOneBy(['name'])), if it does not exists, create a new one but if exists, use what you've retrieved.
Just few notes
Pay attention to email owner (so the retrieve should be do per user I guess as no one can share the same mail UNLESS you can specify some aliases or shared address)
Maybe you don't need an extra entity like CompanyEmail as you can use a json field where you can store them in a comma separated fashion (unless you need some extra parameters or unless you need to perform some indexing/querying operation on the emails)