Symfony data fixtures on ManyToMany relationship

Question

I have two entities Categories and Criteria that are linked by ManyToMany relationship. It generated a new table named as criteria_categories in the database. What i want to do is to use fixture to populate the entity Criteria and the table criteria_categories. The categories table has already data in the database.

So my problem is, how to get the data from categories and insert them using fixtures into the criteria_categories table?

My code is as follow:

Criteria

class Criteria
{
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Categories", inversedBy="criteria", cascade={"persist"})
     * @ORM\JoinTable(name="criteria_categories")
     **/
    private $categories;
}

Categories

class Categories
{
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Criteria", mappedBy="categories")
     **/
    private $criteria;
}

DataFixtures

class LoadCriteria extends Fixture
{
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        $criteria = array(
            array(
                'label' => 'Test1'
            ),
            array(
                'label' => 'Test2'
            )
        );
        $cat = new Categories();

        foreach ($criteria as $critere) {
            $ctr = new Criteria();
            $ctr->setCriteriaLabel($critere['label']);
            $manager->persist($ctr);
        }

        $manager->flush();
    }

}

So the real question is how to get the data from categories and use them here in this fixture to populate the table criteria_categories?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Answer 1

In doctrine you can forget on criteria_categories table. The class criteria has a collection of categories. Don't need to worry about additional tables used behind the scenes.

But to your question. To get all categories from the db, you have to define this fixture as a service and then inject an entity manager or your "wrapper" service.

class LoadCriteria extends Fixture
{
    /**
     * @var CategoriesRepository
     */
    private $repository;

    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
    {
        $this->repository = $em->getRepository(Categories::class);

    }
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        $this->categories = $repository->findAll();

        $criteria = array(
            array(
                'label' => 'Test1'
            ),
            array(
                'label' => 'Test2'
            )
        );
        $cat = new Categories();

        foreach ($criteria as $critere) {
            $ctr = new Criteria();
            $ctr->setCriteriaLabel($critere['label']);
            $manager->persist($ctr);
        }

        $manager->flush();
    }
}

1. If you use default service configuration from symfony 3.3+, your fixture is already a service.

2. If you don't use default service configuration, you have to define the fixture as service manually by.

   #services.yml
   App\DataFixtures\ORM\CriteriaFixture:
       tags: [doctrine.fixture.orm]