Symfony, creating new object slow - php

Question

I need to write a foreach loop where users get subscribed and inserted into the database using doctrine. My code:
$i=0;
$batchSize=20;
foreach ($members as $member) {
$subscription = new Subscription($company, $user);
$entityManager->persist($subscription);
// debug
$i++;
error_log($i);
if ($i % $batchSize === 0) {
$entityManager->flush();
$entityManager->clear();
}
}
this code is really slow. For about 100 users, this code needs a couple minutes to execute. This should be a lot faster right?
When I delete the object creation (and the setMember, and entityManager lines) this code is executed is less than a second.
What am I doing wrong?
UPDATE: Entity code
I changed some variables because of code secrets. If any code is wrong, it's because of the fast changes I made so I could post my issue here.
class Subscription implements \JsonSerializable
{
protected $id;
protected $company;
protected $user;
private $created_on;
private $blocked;
private $attributes;
public function __construct(Company $company, User $user)
{
$this->company = $company;
$this->user = $user;
$this->created_on = new \DateTime();
$this->blocked = false;
$this->attributes = new AttributeCollection();
$this->setDefaultAttributes();
}
public function jsonSerialize() {
return array(
'id' => $this->id,
'user' => $this->user,
'blocked' => $this->blocked,
'created_on' => $this->created_on->format('Y-m-d H:i:s')
);
}
// due to company secrets variables have been changed to a,b,c,d,e,f
public function setDefaultAttributes()
{
if (null == $this->attributes)
$this->attributes = new AttributeCollection();
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('a'));
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('b'));
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('c'));
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('d'));
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('e'));
$this->attributes->addAttribute(new Attribute('f'));
}
public function getId()
{
return $this->id;
}
public function setUser(User $user = null)
{
$this->user = $user;
return $this;
}
public function getUser()
{
return $this->user;
}
public function setCompany(Company $company = null)
{
$this->company = $company;
return $this;
}
public function getCompany()
{
return $this->company;
}
public function getCreatedOn()
{
return $this->created_on;
}
public function setBlocked($blocked)
{
$this->blocked = $blocked;
return $this;
}
public function getBlocked()
{
return $this->blocked;
}
public function setAttributes(AttributeCollection $attributes = null)
{
$this->attributes = $attributes;
return $this;
}
public function getAttributes()
{
return $this->attributes;
}
}
AttributeCollection class used in the Subscription class above:
class AttributeCollection
{
protected $id;
protected $attributes;
public function __construct()
{
$this->attributes = new ArrayCollection();
}
public function removeDefaults()
{
foreach ($this->attributes as $attribute)
if ($attribute->isSystemDefault())
$this->removeAttribute($attribute);
}
public function clearDefaults()
{
foreach ($this->attributes as $attribute)
$attribute->setSystemDefault(false);
}
public function getAttributes()
{
return $this->attributes;
}
public function addAttribute(Attribute $attribute)
{
if (!$this->findAttributeByName($attribute->getName()))
$this->attributes[] = $attribute;
}
public function removeAttribute(Attribute $attribute)
{
$this->attributes->removeElement($attribute);
}
public function findAttributeByName($name)
{
foreach ($this->attributes as $attribute)
if ($attribute->getName() == $name)
return $attribute;
return;
}
public function get($name)
{
$attribute = $this->findAttributeByName($name);
if ($attribute)
return $attribute->getValue();
return;
}
public function getAll()
{
return $this->attributes->toArray();
}
}

Answer 1

It turns out that passing those models through the constructor caused the problem.
I changed my code:
class Subscription {
...
public function __construct($Company == null, $member == null) {
...
}
}
and in my foreach loop:
$subscription = new Subscription();
$subscription->setCompany($company);
$subscription->setMember($member);
this way everything runs smooth and as expected. I have no idea why the constructor is slowing everything down. But apparently it did.

Answer 2

It is not optimal to use such small $batchSize for such small entities.
This way of persisting is presented in documentation as an example of how you can optimize your memory and connection loading, not the speed of whole script.
If you remove these checks on $i and $batchSize it will be faster.
foreach ($members as $member) {
$subscription = new Subscription();
$subscription->setMember($member);
$entityManager->persist($subscription);
}
$entityManager->flush();
Also keep in mind that in dev-env you have debug option is set as enabled and all queries to the DB are logged in files. It also waste a time.