Populate entity from data array without form/request - php

Question

Just wondering if it is possible to only use some parts of the symfony form handling. For exampe, when creating CRUD actions via generate:doctrine:crud I get something in my Controller (for handling create User POST requests) that looks like this:
$entity = new User();
$form = $this->createForm(new UserType(), $entity,
array(
'action' => $this->generateUrl('user_create'),
'method' => 'POST',
));
$form->handleRequest($request);
//Here I have a filled Entity
But what I want is to have this in a more reusable solution. Currently I have my business logic in a service called UserModel. Here I also want to have the create method to create, validate and persist a new entity. Tough the UserModel should also be callable from some Command scripts via the console, so I probably won't always have Request nor a Form.
So now from the above code I know that Symfony is already somehow populating data to an Entity according to the UserType definition, but how could I do that manually without having a Form or a Request and instead just some array of data?
So that I don't have to take care of setting the properties myself.
Edit:
The validation is no issue for populating the entity, I'm using the validator later on the populated entity before persisting the data.
And also important for me would be that the passed related entity ids will be handled/loaded automatically.

Answer 1

you may still use the Form component, but instead of using handleRequest, you should use directly submit.
If you are curious, you should look up the code on github for both handleRequest and what it actually does ; you'll see that it just do some verification, takes the data from the Request, and then uses the submit method of the Form.
So, basically, you can use only the submit method with the data you wish to use. It even validates your entity. :)
UPDATE
And for the concern of creating / updating related entities, if your relation have a persist / update cascade, it should roll out from itself without you doing a single thing, except persist + flush on your main entity.

Answer 2

If you do not worry about handling validation like things, you can do something like I have done.
You can define a trait or include the fromArray function in your entity classes.
trait EntityHydrationMethod
{
public function fromArray($data = array())
{
foreach ($data as $property => $value) {
$method = "set{$property}";
$this->$method($value);
}
}
}
If you defined trait, you can use it in your entities like:
class User{
use EntityHydrationMethod;
}
Then from your user model you can define your create function something like:
public function create($data = array())
{
$entity = new User();
$entity->fromArray($data);
return $entity;
}
-Updated-
As you updated your question. you may achieve this by defining a trait or include the createFromArray function in your EntityRepository classes.
trait RepositoryCreateMethod {
public function createFromArray($data)
{
$class = $this->getClassName();
$object = new $class();
$meta = $this->getClassMetadata();
foreach ($data as $property => $value) {
$v = $value;
if(!empty($value) && $meta->hasAssociation($property)) {
$map = $meta->getAssociationMapping($property);
$v = $this->_em->getRepository($map['targetEntity'])->find($value);
if(empty($v)){
throw new \Exception('Associate data not found');
}
}
$method = "set{$property}";
$object->$method($v);
}
return $object;
}
}
If you defined trait, you can use it in your Repository like:
class UserRepository{
use RepositoryCreateMethod;
}
Then you can use this something like call from controller:
$user = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository('YourBundle:User')
->createFromArray($data);