Symfony/Doctrine not updating in memory - php

Question

I suspect this is a straightforward problem about entities not updating in memory.
Here are my repository functions:
public function insertTask($information)
{
...
$entityManager = $this->getEntityManager();
$entityManager->persist($taskObj);
$entityManager->flush();
// Update the task defects for this task
$this->updateTaskDefectTaskIds($taskObj->getId(), $task['defects']);
return $taskObj;
}
private function updateTaskDefectTaskIds($task, $defects)
{
$taskDefectIds = array();
foreach ($defects as $defect)
{
$taskDefectIds[] = intval($defect['taskDefectId']);
}
// Update the task IDs on the task defects
$this->getEntityManager()
->createQuery('UPDATE Model:TaskDefect td SET td.task = :task WHERE td.id IN (:taskDefectIds)')
->setParameter('task', $task)
->setParameter('taskDefectIds', $taskDefectIds)
->execute();
$this->getEntityManager()->flush();
}
This appears to be working. Basically I have:
- Task table
- TaskDefect table
TaskDefects by virtue of the way the app is written, get inserted before the Task does. But this means I need to, once the Task is eventually added, update the TaskDefect records to point to the new TaskId.
The problem I face though, is somewhere in memory (from the actual database side of things it is updating correctly) it's not picking up my changes. For example, I update some TaskDefects to point to the new TaskId - but then I access the Task object and it says there are no defects.
If I go to another page, and try and access the same task - then it says there are defects.
So I feel I'm missing a flush() or a persist() or something which is stopping the entities in memory from updating. Obviously reloading a page forces the refresh and it works fine then.
Here's what I have in my controller:
$task = $repository->insertTask($content); // i figured maybe at this point it's too much to expect the task obj to magically update
$updatedTask = $repository->findOneById($task->getId()); // so I grab it again... but no luck
var_dump($updatedTask->getDefects()); // ... because this returns no defects
Any ideas welcome. Thanks.

Answer 1

This line in insertTask:
return $taskObj;
Has no connection to what is happening in updateTaskDefectTaskIds because you're not modifying $taskObj at all, you're just passing an id value, then updating defect objects via DQL.
If you'd like $taskObj to reflect your defect additions from insertTask you would do something like this:
public function insertTask($information)
{
...
$entityManager = $this->getEntityManager();
$entityManager->persist($taskObj);
$entityManager->flush();
// Update the task defects for this task
$this->updateTaskDefectTaskIds($taskObj, $task['defects']);
return $taskObj;
}
private function updateTaskDefectTaskIds($taskObj, $defects)
{
foreach ($defects as $defect)
{
$defect = $this->getEntityManager()->getRepository('YourBundle:Defect')->find(intval($defect['taskDefectId']));
if ($defect instanceof Defect) {
$defect->setTaskObj($taskObj);
$this->getEntityManager()->persist($defect);
$taskObj->addDefect($defect);
}
}
$this->getEntityManager()->persist($taskObj);
$this->getEntityManager()->flush();
}
Or, if you don't mind an extra db call just refresh $taskObj in insertTask like this:
$this->getEntityManager()->refresh($taskObj);
return $taskObj;
Also, doctrine loves to cache what you have in memory, so if it doesn't have any reason to check the db (in your code example it can't know about your change) then it will just happily serve you up the stale object when you fetch the entity by id.