How to POST nested entities with FOSRest and Symfony Form - php

Question

Using Symfony 3.2 and FOS REST Bundle I have created some REST endpoints for a resource and use a Symfony Form to define the fields for API DOC. Everything is working fine to this point.
Now I'm trying to improve my schema and added a sub entity (one-to-one) to my resource. I want the main resource to save the sub entity - there is no dedicated endpoint for the sub entity.
I followed the instruction on the Symfony documentation and removed all other fields to isolate any issues.
This is how my form type looks now:
<?php
namespace VendorName\MyBundle\Form;
use Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Form\Type\EntityType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolver;
class CountryType extends AbstractType
{
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('mySubEntity', EntityType::class, array(
'multiple' => false,
'expanded' => false,
'property' => 'name',
'class' => 'MyBundle\Entity\mySubEntity'));
}
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => 'VendorName\MyBundle\Entity\Country',
'csrf_protection' => false
));
}
}
Now when I load my api-docs, I receive the error message The option "property" does not exist. Defined options are: "action", "allow_extra_fields", [...].
To be honest, I don't even know if adding the Entity to the form is the right approach to make it show up in the API Docs. Any help in resolving the above issue and / or best practices to achieve this would be appreciated.
EDIT: Thanks to #miikes this error is now resolved and I can see the api doc showing up correctly with the fields of the nested form. However, now my issue is that the form does not populate the sub entity on the parent entity. This seems to be related to the way I modelled the parent-child relationship and I have posted a new question for this issue.

Answer 1

To resolve your error try to use choice_label, instead of property option.
'choice_label' => 'name'
But referring to the documentation, EntityType is a kind of ChoiceType, so using this type, you can only select existing entity, not persist new one.
The easiest and most clear way for creating new entity instance is creating another type class, designed for your entity, and adding the type as the field to your CountryType.
class MyEntityType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('some-field', TextType::class)
->add('another-field', TextType::class);
}
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults([
'data_class' => MyEntity::class
]);
}
}
class CountryType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder->add('mySubEntity', MyEntityType::class);
}
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array(
'data_class' => Country::class,
'csrf_protection' => false
));
}
}
So you should pass form data as
['mySubEntity']['some-field'] = 'foo'
['mySubEntity']['another-field'] = 'bar'
Another tip is to use Country::class instead of string 'VendorName\MyBundle\Entity\Country', because in case of renaming class, IDE refactoring should affect on your type.