CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databasesymfonydoctrineentity
Matt Welander
Matt Welander

Reputation: 8548

symfony2 doctrine array of entities possible?

I am trying to work out a good way of storing an array of objects in my sym2 entity. The objects in the array would look like this:

{
    "id"        :   1,
    "top"       :   200,
    "left"      :   150,
    "width"     :   500,
    "height"    :   600
}

Should I just go for the array property like this?

/**
 * @var array $modules
 * 
 * @ORM\Column(name="modules", type="array", nullable=true)
 */
private $modules;
/*
{
    "id"        :   1,
    "left"      :   150,
    "top"       :   200,
    "width"     :   500,
    "height"    :   600
}
*/

Or is there a smoother way, could I create the objects contained in this array as a separate entity and store instead an array of those entities here in this entity?

I do not want to save these to database separately, I would like to keep them inside this main entity. I get that I could set up a many to many relationship but I don't want to, it is a bit overkill for what I am trying to accomplish.

----- UPDATE ------- Thanks to Guillaume Verbal, here's what I will do, I assume this will work fine as well then since JSON can take nested objects infinitely?

    $person[0] = new Acme\Person();
$person->setName('foo');
$person->setAge(99);

$person[1] = new Acme\Person();
$person->setName('foo');
$person->setAge(99);

$jsonContent = $serializer->serialize($person, 'json');

// $jsonContent contains {"name":"foo","age":99}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5544

Answers (2)

William Vbl
William Vbl

Reputation: 503

You can use the Symfony 2 Serializer Component: http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/serializer.html

use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Serializer;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\XmlEncoder;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Encoder\JsonEncoder;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\GetSetMethodNormalizer;

$encoders = array(new XmlEncoder(), new JsonEncoder());
$normalizers = array(new GetSetMethodNormalizer());

$serializer = new Serializer($normalizers, $encoders);

$person = new Acme\Person();
$person->setName('foo');
$person->setAge(99);

$jsonContent = $serializer->serialize($person, 'json');

// $jsonContent contains {"name":"foo","age":99}

Upvotes: 4

Tom Tom
Tom Tom

Reputation: 3698

You can use JSON type for this

http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/serializer.html

Upvotes: 1

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