Doctrine 2.1 - entity inserting - php

Question

I have question about inserting entity into a database. I have two models:
class News {
/**
* #Column(type="string", length=100)
* #var string
*/
protected $title;
/**
* #ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="news")
* #JoinColumn(referencedColumnName="id")
*/
protected $author;
}
class User {
/**
* #Id #GeneratedValue #Column(type="integer")
* #var integer
*/
protected $id;
/**
* #OneToMany(targetEntity="News", mappedBy="author")
*/
protected $news;
public function __construct() {
$this->news = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
}
}
To add new news I must include both User and News classes (if they're in separate files, for ex. UserModel.php and NewsModel.php) and write a code:
$news = new News()
$news->setTitle('TEST title');
$news->setAuthor($database->find('User', 1));
$database->persist($news);
My question is: Is there any way to insert news without including User class?

Answer 1

You don't need to actually load the User.
Instead, you can use a reference proxy:
<?PHP
$news = new News()
$news->setTitle('TEST title');
$news->setAuthor($em->getReference('User',1));
$em->persist($news);

Answer 2

one other thing you could do (thinking in a more object-oriented kinda way) is add a method called addNews($news) on your user entity:
public function addNews($news) {
// you should check if the news doesn't already exist here first
$this->news->add($news);
$news->setAuthor($this);
}
and add cascade persist to your mapping:
/**
* #OneToMany(targetEntity="News", mappedBy="author", cascade={"persist"})
*/
protected $news;
then fetch your user, add the news, and merge the changes:
$news = new News()
$news->setTitle('TEST title');
$author = $database->find('User', 1);
$author->addNews($news);
//merge changes on author entity directly
$em->merge($author);
I preferr this approach because it gives you the opportunity to do extra checks or controls while adding the news, making for reusable and easy to read code