Doctrine2: persisting parent entity given child class - php

Question

I've got a User Entity defined (mapping in yml)
namespace My\CoreBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
class User
{
...
And I created a child class that inherits from that entity, so that I can add some custom validation methods and a few fields that I need but do not need to be persisted (e.g. ConfirmPassword, ConfirmEmail fields)
namespace My\SecondBundle\EditModels;
use My\CoreBundle\Entity\User;
class UserModel extends User
{
When the user submit a registration form, I map the request to a UserModel entity, and if it is valid I try to persist the user.
The following code throws an exception
$entityManager->persist($userModel);
//=>The class 'My\SecondBundle\EditModels\UserModel' was not found in the chain configured namespaces My\CoreBundle\Entity
Question: How can I persist $userModel (instance of UserModel) as a User entity class? Possible options:
Do not use an inherited class and add custom fields and validation method to the User entity itself
Copy the fields from the UserModel to the User entity and persist the user entity
I don't think I should use Doctrine inheritance mechanism as I do not want to save the extra fields.
Thank you

Answer 1

I think your problem here, is that you've just configured My\CoreBundle\Entity namespace in Doctrine2, but the entity you actually want to persist is located in My\SecondBundle\EditModels.
Usually when inheriting classes marked as #ORM\Entity() the class you are extending from must have the class annotation #ORM\MappedSuperclass(). But normally you use this for single table inhertiance e.g., not for your usecase.
In my opinion the approach to split database related attributes from the others, is not affordable. I would keep validation related stuff in the model itself - you need it in your create/update action.
I'm not familiar with XML configuration, but when using annotations you need to mark each property to be mapped with database (using #ORM\Column()). So Doctrine will ignore all the other attributes and methods entirely.
So here I share my recently developed AbstractModel for you, to see how I've implemented validation (with respect/validation):
<?php
namespace Vendor\Package\Model;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* Abstract Model
*
* #ORM\MappedSuperclass()
*/
abstract class AbstractModel
{
/**
* #var \Respect\Validation\Validator
*/
protected $validator;
/**
* AbstractModel constructor
*/
public function __construct()
{
$this->validator = static::validation();
}
/**
* Defines validation for this model
*
* #return \Respect\Validation\Validator
*/
public static function validation() : \Respect\Validation\Validator
{
return \Respect\Validation\Validator::create();
}
/**
* Executes validations, defined in validation method.
*
* #return bool
*/
public function isValid() : bool
{
if (is_null($this->validator)) {
$this->validator = new \Respect\Validation\Validator();
$this->validation();
}
return $this->validator->validate($this);
}
}
A model which extends from the AbstractModel needs to implement a static validate method, to define class validation:
<?php
namespace Vendor\Package\Model;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
/**
* #ORM\Entity()
* #ORM\Table(name="my_model")
*/
class MyModel extends AbstractModel
{
/**
* #var string
* #ORM\Column(type="string")
*/
private $name;
/**
* Defines validation for this model
*
* #return \Respect\Validation\Validator
*/
public static function validation() : \Respect\Validation\Validator
{
return \Respect\Validation\Validator::create()
->attribute('name', \Respect\Validation\Validator::notEmpty()->stringType()->length(null, 32))
;
}
// getter, setter, ...
}
Each entity, persisted to database, will have the $validator property and all these methods, but because I left annotations here (and pretty sure this also works with xml/yaml) Doctrine ignores it.
And this way you also keep validation related stuff out of the model class itself, which is good for readability. The validation itself should be defined in the model itself, imho. But this respect/validation framework is neat way to achive this. Hope this helps :)