How to join entites like they are tables in Doctrine 2? - php

Question

The documentation on how to retrieve joined entites as one object is very sparse, and most Stack Overflow questions on the subject are many years old.
I have a symfony project up and running with a database schema fully mapped in Doctrine. In my controllers I am able to run these two queries one after the other and they work fine.
$page = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository('PageBundle:SitePages')
->findByprodpageid($id);
$matrices = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository('PageBundle:SiteMatrices')
->findByprodpageid($id);
however both of them contain the attribute prodpageid and I would like to join the two entities on this column and receive one object containing all column values from both tables.
I am building this on top of an existing database structure so anything to do with changing the database structure etc is out of the question.
I have added annotations in my entities to specify which columns should be joined, in a ManyToOne relationship. But how do I activate that relation and receive the joined object?
Thanks for any info on the subject.
EDIT: Here are my relationships from the entities
//Entities/SitePages
/**
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="ProdPageID", type="smallint")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="SiteMatrices")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="prodpageid", referencedColumnName="prodpageid")
*/
private $prodpageid;
//Entities/SiteMatrices
/**
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="ProdPageID", type="smallint", nullable=false)
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="SitePages")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="prodpageid", referencedColumnName="prodpageid")
*
*/
private $prodpageid;

Answer 1

You are saying that a Page has many Matrices. I will make some changes by your permission in mapping annotations:
/**
* Entities/SitePages
*
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="ProdPageID", type="smallint")
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="SiteMatrices")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="prodpageid", referencedColumnName="prodpageid")
*/
private $matrices;
/**
* #return ArrayCollection
*/
public function getMatrices(){
return $this->matrices;
}
/**
* #param Entities/SiteMatrices[]
* #return $this
*/
public function setMatrices($matrices){
$this->matrices = $matrices;
return $this;
}
and
/**
* Entities/SiteMatrices
*
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="ProdPageID", type="smallint", nullable=false)
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="SitePages")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="prodpageid", referencedColumnName="prodpageid")
*
*/
private $page;
/**
* #return Entities/SitePages
*/
public function getPage(){
return $this->page;
}
/**
* #param Entities/SitePages
* #return $this
*/
public function setPage($page){
$this->page = $page;
return $this;
}
Now if you query the Pages with this DQL:
$pages = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository('PageBundle:SitePages')
->findByprodpageid($id);
Then you could get each page's matrices simply by traversing on matrices association:
foreach($pages as $page){
$matrices = $page->getMatrices(); // will give you an ArrayCollection of all matrices objects joined by prodpageid to this page.
}
Hope I did not get you wrong and it helps.