Symfony form entity with allow add - php

Question

I'm building an application with Symfony 2.3.
I have a Booking entity witch is related to a Customer entity by a ManyToOne relation.
In my form, i would like to be able to select one existing customer or create a new one.
For exemple by having a "new customer" option in my customer select who will display the customer form with javascript for exemple.
In fact i'm trying to build an Entity form field with an "allow_add" option like in the collection form field.
Any idea of how i can do that ?
Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Thanks for contributing. I found a way to achieve it !
The solution is to have one field with the Customer form, it has to be mapped, and an entity field en the Customer entity but not mapped.
$builder->addEventListener(
FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA,
function(FormEvent $event) use ($company) {
$form = $event->getForm();
$data = $event->getData();
$form->add('customer_list', 'entity',
[
'class' => 'SomeBunlde\Entity\Customer',
'label' => 'Client',
'property' => 'fullName',
'expanded' => false,
'multiple' => false,
'mapped' => false,
'query_builder' => function(EntityRepository $er) use ($company)
{
return $er->getByCompanyQueryBuilder($company);
},
]
)
;
if ($data->getCustomer() === null) {
$form->add('customer', new CustomerType());
}
}
After i add an extra option to the Entity form field overloading the finishView method :
public function finishView(FormView $view, FormInterface $form, array $options)
{
array_unshift($view->children['customer_list']->vars['choices'], new SfFormExt\ChoiceView('test', 'new', 'Nouveau client'));
}
Then i add two event listeners, a pre_submit to delete the mapped embeded customer form and its data :
$builder->addEventListener(
FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT,
function(FormEvent $event) use ($em) {
$data = $event->getData();
if ($data['customer_list'] !== 'new') {
unset($data['customer']);
$event->getForm()->remove('customer');
// setting data w/out customer to avoid extra-field error
$event->setData($data);
}
}
);
and a bind event to attach the existing customer to the booking :
$builder->addEventListener(
FormEvents::BIND,
function(FormEvent $event) use ($em) {
$form = $event->getForm();
$data = $event->getData();
if (!$form->has('customer')) {
$existing_customer = $form->get('customer_list')->getData();
if ($existing_customer instanceof Customer) {
$data->setCustomer($existing_customer);
}
}
}
);
I know it may not be state of the art code but it works pretty well.
Edit : I had an issue with this technique because when the customer_list is set to new, it throws an error. I didn't find a way to avoid this error (If you have any idea of how i can achieve this !) so i decided to modify the pre_submit to set to '' the data of customer_list value if we are in the new customer case, then i detect, in the controller, if there is a form validation error on the new client form in order to correctly display it.

Answer 2

I think the best way to do that is managing this workflow with javascript.
If you user choose to create a new customer, you open a create new customer form in a modal and via Ajax create the new customer. The response of the create action returns the id in the response which will be used by you to create the booking with the newly created customer.
The trick is: you will always create a booking from an existing customer. Your user can create a new customer in the process, but in fact it'll be created before you create the booking record.