Symfony2: Where place slug and timestamp methods? - php

Question

I am coding a service which will handle articles (CRUD).
The persistence layer is handles by an ArticleManager >which does Repository and CRUD actions.
Now I want to implement two attributes: createdAt and >updatedAt
My question is now where I should place them:
In the entity, in the ArticleManager, somewhere else?
Best Regards,
Bodo
Ah,
I see, the FOSUserBundle handles this task with an EventListener:
https://github.com/FriendsOfSymfony/FOSUserBundle/blob/master/Entity/UserListener.php
But thank you for youre help :)
<?php
namespace LOC\ArticleBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\Common\EventSubscriber;
use Doctrine\ORM\Events;
use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Doctrine\ORM\Event\PreUpdateEventArgs;
use LOC\ArticleBundle\Model\ArticleInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;
class ArticleListener implements EventSubscriber
{
private $articleManager;
private $container;
public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
{
$this->container = $container;
}
public function getSubscribedEvents()
{
return array(
Events::prePersist,
Events::preUpdate,
);
}
public function prePersist(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
{
$article = $args->getEntity();
$article->setCreatedAt(new \DateTime());
$this->articleManager->updateArticle($article);
}
public function preUpdate(PreUpdateEventArgs $args)
{
$article = $args->getEntity();
$article->setUpdatedAt(new \DateTime());
$this->articleManager->updateArticle($article);
}
}

Answer 1

Well, there is a bundle for such stuff, the DoctrineExtensionsBundle. It got Timestampable and slugable.
If you want to do it on your own, the place is definitly in the Entity itself, as you don't want to mess around in your controller. Here is how I do the Timestampable as I don't use the DoctrineExtensionsBundle:
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="entity")
* #ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
*/
class Entity {
// ...
/**
* #ORM\Column(name="created_at", type="datetime", nullable=false)
*/
protected $createdAt;
/**
* #ORM\Column(name="updated_at", type="datetime", nullable=false)
*/
protected $updatedAt;
/**
* #ORM\prePersist
*/
public function prePersist() {
$this->createdAt = new \DateTime();
$this->updatedAt = new \DateTime();
}
/**
* #ORM\preUpdate
*/
public function preUpdate() {
$this->updatedAt = new \DateTime();
}
// ...
}
As for my decision not to use the Bundle: When symfony2 was released as stable, this bundle didn't exist (or it wasn't stable, I don't remember) so I started doing it on my own like shown below. As it is little overhead, I kept doing it like this and never felt the need to change it. If you need Slugable or want to keep it simply, try the bundle!

Answer 2

In the entity, since that's where they belong logically.