Multiple entities persist doctrine2 Zend - php

Question

I have 3 Entities Users, UserProfile and Staffs
The User profile is linked to Users table through user id
The Staff table is linked to userprofile using the userprofileid
Admin create the user profile and generate the registration no, username and password.
I want add a user record to the users table then add the user profile and then add the profile id to the staff table.
I want to persist three entities sequentialy
I tried to create an instance for the Users like
$this->userent->setUsername('xxx');
$this->em->persist($this->userent);
$this->em->flush();
then:
$this->profileent->setFirstname('xxx');
$this->em->persist($this->profileent);
$this->em->flush();
Basically a form is shared among three entities and I want to insert into three tables sequentially,
Updated
Apart from users entity i have a usertype entity linked to users...i want to persist only the foreign key. i have
setUserType(Usertype $userType) method an instance of the user_type entity in users
when i do
$this->userent = new Users();
$this->userent->setUserType($this->em->getRepository('\Campus\Entity\Usertype')->findByUserType("admin"))
i get the error
Argument 1 passed to Campus\Entity\Users::setUserType() must be an instance of Campus\Entity\Usertype, array given
if i pass the value of the array which is an instance of Usertype
i get an error saying need an array for the ArrayCollection..help please!!!
Argument 1 passed to Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection::__construct() must be of the type array, object given, called in D:\xampp\htdocs\zend\library\Doctrine\ORM\UnitOfWork.php on line 406 defined in D:\xampp\htdocs\zend\library\Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection.php on line 46

Answer 1

Think less about the database, and more about your objects. That's the whole point of doctrine.
You want something like this:
<?php
// create some entities
$user = new Entity\User();
$user->setUsername('userman');
$profile = new Entity\UserProfile();
$profile->setFirstname('joe');
$profile->setLastname('smith');
$staff = new Entity\Staff();
$staff->setSomething('value-for-something');
// associate those entities together
$profile->setStaff($staff);
$user->setProfile($profile);
// assuming you have set up cascade={"persist"} on your associations
$this->em->persist($user);
// if you haven't set up cascade={"persist"}, you will need to call persist on each entity:
// $this->em->persist($profile);
// $this->em->persist($staff);
$em->flush();
So, the basic idea is you build up your objects, get them into Doctrine's Unit-of-Work (by calling persist() and maybe having some cascades set up), then write them all to the database in a single transaction by calling flush()

Answer 2

You can persist each entity, and then flush() one time at the end.
If you have relations between your entities, you can check the following annotation
cascade={"persist"}
"Cascades persist operations to the associated entities."
Have a look at the documentation here : http://docs.doctrine-project.org/en/2.0.x/reference/working-with-associations.html#transitive-persistence-cascade-operations