How to restrict associations to a subset of another association in Doctrine? - php

Question

I got a bit stuck with multiple mappings of the same object in Doctrine. The app is build on Symfony btw, hence the slightly different annotations.
Basically I have the following objects:
Organisation: an umbrella holding attributes about an organisation
Department: a department within the organisation
User: a generic user object
Those objects are related as follows:
An organisation always has one and only one owner, which is a User
An organisation has many members, which are all User's
A department consists of many User's, but only members of the Organisation the Department is a part of are allowed
I'm a bit stuck at the third requirement... First of all, this is how my objects more or less look like atm:
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="organisations")
*/
class Organisation
{
// ...
/**
* #ORM\OneToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="organisation")
*/
private $owner;
/**
* ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="organisation")
*/
private $members
}
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="departments")
*/
class Department
{
// ...
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="departments")
*/
private $members
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Organisation", inversedBy="departments")
*/
private $organisation;
}
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="users")
*/
class User
{
// ...
/**
* The organisation this user "owns"
*
* #ORM\OneToOne(targetEntity="Organisation", mappedBy="owner", nullable=true)
*/
private $owning_organisation;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Organisation", inversedBy="members")
*/
private $organisations;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Department", inversedBy="members")
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="users_departments")
*/
private $departments;
}
Now this basically works, if and only of in the controllers I do all the checking (something like (if( $user->isPartOfOrganisation($department-getOrganisation()) { $department->addMember($user); }).
But is there a way to restrict possible object associations on design level? So basically what I want is that if a user is added to a department, it is solely possible if the user is already part of the organisation the department is also a part of. Or should I do the check in the addMember() method of the Department object? I can imagine (but cannot find it) that there is some kind of a subset-restriction (Department::members is subset of Organisation::members).

Answer 1

To implements this check low-level as possible (nearest to the db) I think the only solution is a Doctrine Event Listener that in the pre-persist event check for your custom constraint. Read more about Doctrine Event System .
BTW I think you can manage this situation in a more simply manner: I suggest you to incapsulate the business logic into a service (so you can reuse it more simply) and use it in a custom validator that you will use in the form where you manage this situation.
Let me know if you need more tips to develop one of this solutions or if you found something more useful.
Hope this help