How to persist cloned entity object in Symfony/Doctrine - php

Question

I am trying to clone an entity record along with the relationships it holds among other entities. I have successfully cloned some entity objects but this one to many entity relationship has challenged me. I have reviewed similar questions regarding the error message I have been given without progress to the challenge.
The correct records are queried out, looped through and cloned then stored in an array. I have tried to persist the array but get error
EntityManager#persist() expects parameter 1 to be an entity object,
array given
I then tried to encode the array and persist but I get error
The class 'Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse' was not
found in the chain configured namespaces NameOfBundle\Entity.
This below code is in my controller
$quoteItemAddWorkCollection = $em->getRepository('UniflyteBundle:QuoteItemAdditionalWork')->findBy($params);
$quoteItemDeliverableCollection = $em->getRepository('UniflyteBundle:QuoteItemDeliverable')->findBy($params);
if (!empty($quoteItemAddWorkCollection)) {
$quoteItemAddWorkArray = [];
foreach ($quoteItemAddWorkCollection as $quoteItemAddWorkItem) {
$quoteItemAddWorkItemClone = clone $quoteItemAddWorkItem;
array_push($quoteItemAddWorkArray, $quoteItemAddWorkItemClone);
}
$quoteItemAddWorkCollection = new JsonResponse($quoteItemAddWorkArray);
$em->persist($quoteItemAddWorkCollection);
I can't persist an array, I have to encode it to json first I believe. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I think you have a misunderstanding of Doctrine concepts here. In terms of Doctrine, each entity:
UniflyteBundle:QuoteItemAdditionalWork
and
UniflyteBundle:QuoteItemDeliverable
, and any of its relationships, could get persisted, using a configuration named Mapping.
To get this into work, any In-Memory object, MUST be an instance of a managed entity class.
There is not such a magic in Doctrine, to persist so many unknown objects at once. You may persist them, one-by-one inside a loop:
foreach ($quoteItemAddWorkCollection as $quoteItemAddWorkItem) {
$quoteItemAddWorkItemClone = clone $quoteItemAddWorkItem;
$quoteItemAddWorkItemClone->setId(null);
// Set relationships here ...
$em->persist($quoteItemAddWorkItemClone);
}
Keep in mind to set any required relationships, before persisting your new cloned objects.
If you want to use, one persist, you can assign their relationships, inside a loop:
foreach ($quoteItemAddWorkCollection as $quoteItemAddWorkItem) {
$quoteItemAddWorkItemClone = clone $quoteItemAddWorkItem;
$quoteItemAddWorkItemClone->setId(null);
$someParentCollection->add($quoteItemAddWorkItemClone);
}
$em->persist($someParentCollection);
the latter method, needs you to set cascade on mapping configuration:
class SomeParent
{
// #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="QuoteItemAdditionalWork", mappedBy="parent", cascade={"persist"})
private $quoteItemAddWork;
}