Accessing collection form field from controller in Symfony2 - php

Question

I am building a form that is rendered from two different Type classes in Symfony2 (using the collection type for the second Type) and I am having trouble accessing data from the collection field in the controller. Here is the code for the outer formBuilders method:
// ...
class EmployeeCreateType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
// ...
->add('positions', 'collection', array(
'type' => new PositionCreateType(),
'label' => ' ',
'allow_add' => false,
'prototype' => false,
));
}
// ...
and here is the code for the inner buildForm method from PositionCreateType:
// ...
class PositionCreateType extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('title', 'choice', array(
'label' => 'Title: ',
'choices' => array(
'Senior Engineer',
'Staff',
'Engineer',
'Senior Staff',
'Assistant Engineer',
'Technique Leader',
),
'expanded' => true,
'multiple' => false,
))
->add('department', 'choice', array(
'label' => 'Department: ',
'choices' => array(
'd001' => 'Marketing',
'd002' => 'Finance',
'd003' => 'Human Resources',
'd004' => 'Production',
'd005' => 'Development',
'd006' => 'Quality Management',
'd007' => 'Sales',
'd008' => 'Research',
'd009' => 'Customer Service',
),
'expanded' => true,
'multiple' => false,
));
}
// ...
I would like to access the department field from my controller, but I can't figure out how to do it. I've tried doing something like
$form->get('positions')->get('department')->getData();
but it is not working.

Answer 1

I figured out the solution. Because a collection is an ArrayCollection, you have to access the element of the collection that corresponds to the object you want to access by providing the correct index. Because there was only one item in this collection (a separate form type), the following statement did the trick:
$form->get('positions')->getData()->get('0')->getDepartment();
In other words,
$form->get('positions')->getData()->get('0')
returns the entity (Position) corresponding to my separate form type, PositionCreateType().