Symfony 4 + Doctrine: organize entities in subfolders - php

Question

I'm trying to make a website with Symfony 4 and Doctrine. I'm a complete beginner (both with Symfony and PHP in general), so I apologise if my question is trivial.
I want to create a database with doctrine, which means that I have to create classes in src/Entity. But I also want to add forms to the site, and they also require classes in src/Entity. I'd like to separate these classes in two subfolders: src/Entity/database and src/Entity/forms. I tried to edit config/packages/doctrine.yaml as follows:
doctrine:
#...
orm:
#...
mappings:
App:
#...
dir: '%kernel.project_dir%/src/Entity/database'
prefix: 'App\Entity\database'
But I when I use bin/console make:entity Entity it creates the file in src/Entity and gives the following error:
[ERROR] Only annotation mapping is supported by make:entity, but the
<info>App\Entity\Entity</info> class uses a different format. If you
would like this command to generate the properties & getter/setter
methods, add your mapping configuration, and then re-run this command
with the <info>--regenerate</info> flag.
When I run bin/console make:entity Entity --regenerate it says:
[ERROR] No entities were found in the "Entity" namespace.
I also tried bin/console make:entity database/Entity, but it fails with:
[ERROR] "App\Entity\Database/Entity" is not valid as a PHP class name (it must start with a letter or underscore,
followed by any number of letters, numbers, or underscores)
If I do the same with a backslash (database\Entity) it creates a DatabaseEntity.php file in the wrong directory and gives the same error as the first one.

Answer 1

Be very careful, because with such approach you might mess your architecture up. This question is a bit opinionated, but I'm gonna tell you how we make it with entities and forms.
First, my strong belief, Entities and Forms should be separated. Therefore, we contain Entites in src/Entity and Forms in src/Form. The connection between them is a FormType, we contain those in src/FormType.
Here's an example User entity contained in src/Entity/User.php:
namespace App\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntity;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
/**
* #UniqueEntity("username")
*
* #ORM\Entity()
* #ORM\Table(name="users")
*/
class User implements UserInterface, \Serializable
{
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*
* #var int
*/
private $id;
/**
* #Assert\NotBlank()
* #Assert\Email
* #Assert\Length(max="255")
*
* #ORM\Column(type="string", length=255, unique=true)
*
* #var string
*/
private $username;
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="string", length=64)
*
* #var string
*/
private $password;
/**
* #return int
*/
public function getId(): int
{
return $this->id;
}
/**
* #return string The username
*/
public function getUsername()
{
return $this->username;
}
/**
* #param null|string $username
*
* #return User
*/
public function setUsername(?string $username): User
{
$this->username = (string) $username;
return $this;
}
/**
* #return string
*/
public function getPassword(): string
{
return $this->password;
}
/**
* #param null|string $password
*
* #return User
*/
public function setPassword(?string $password): User
{
$this->password = (string) $password;
return $this;
}
}
Now, we need a user to be able to register. For this we create a FormType and a Form. Take a look at src/FormType/User.php:
namespace App\FormType;
use App\Entity;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type as NativeType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolver;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\NotBlank;
class User extends AbstractType
{
public function getParent(): string
{
return BaseType::class;
}
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
// This maps `Entity\User::username` to the respective field
$builder->add(
'username',
NativeType\EmailType::class,
['label' => 'username']
);
// This maps `Entity\User::password` to the respective field
$builder->add(
'password',
NativeType\RepeatedType::class,
[
'constraints' => [new NotBlank()],
'invalid_message' => 'nonMatchingPasswords',
'first_options' => ['label' => 'password'],
'second_options' => ['label' => 'password again'],
'type' => NativeType\PasswordType::class,
]
);
}
// This tells Symfony to resolve the form to the `Entity\User` class
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(['data_class' => Entity\User::class]);
}
}
And now the Form itself, it's src/Form/UserRegistration.php:
namespace App\Form;
use App\FormType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type as NativeType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolver;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints;
class UserRegistration extends AbstractType
{
public function getParent()
{
// Note this!
return FormType\User::class;
}
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(
[
'fields' => ['username', 'password'],
'translation_domain' => 'forms',
]
);
}
}
And a final stroke on this. In src/Controller/Registration.php we do this:
$form = $this->createForm(
Form\UserRegistration::class,
$user = new Entity\User()
);
The rest (how to handle forms etc.) you know. If you don't, read Symfony docs, they cover it perfectly.
I have cut out / edited some sensitive or non-essential things from this example. For instance, we do not bind password to password, we ask for plain password and then encrypt it. I have not tested the above, so it might not be stable. But for a demonstration on how your architecture should be done it's a good example, IMO.