CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpsymfonydoctrine
scandel
scandel

Reputation: 1822

Doctrine: use only the id to set a related entity

I have two entities: Product and Category. A product can be in one category, so there is a OneToMany relation between the two entities: 

/**
 * @ORM\Entity()
 */
class Category
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id()
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue()
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string", length=255)
     */
    private $name;

    /**
     * @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="App\Entity\Product", mappedBy="category")
     */
    private $products;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->products = new ArrayCollection();
    }

    public function getProducts(): Collection
    {
        return $this->products;
    }

    public function addProduct(Product $product): self
    {
        if (!$this->products->contains($product)) {
            $this->products[] = $product;
            $product->setCategory($this);
        }

        return $this;
    }

    public function removeProduct(Product $product): self
    {
        if ($this->products->contains($product)) {
            $this->products->removeElement($product);
            $product->setCategory(null);
        }
        return $this;
    }    

    // Other methods of the class 
    ...
}


/**
 * @ORM\Entity()
 */
class Product
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id()
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue()
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $id;


    // Some properties
    ...

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="App\Entity\Category", inversedBy="products")
     */
    private $category;


    public function getCategory(): ?Category
    {
        return $this->category;
    }

    public function setCategory(?Category $category): self
    {
        $this->category = $category;
        return $this;
    }

    // Other methods of the class 
    ...

}

With that, I can assign or remove a Category object to Product objects, which is the normal case: 

// set category
$categoryId = 25;
$category = $entityManager->getRepository(Category::class)->find($categoryId); 
$product->setCategory($category);
...
// remove category
$product->setCategory(null);

BUT, what I want to do, is that in a special an complicated situation, I have the category id (here 25), and I would like to set the corresponding category to a product, but without retrieving the Category object from the database (because it is in an entity context, where I don't want to use the EntityManager).

Is there a way to achieve something like: 

$categoryId = 25;
$product->setCategoryById($categoryId);


class Product
{
    public function setCategoryById(int $categoryId): self
    {
        ???
    }
}

It feels possible because, after all, in the database, it is just the category id which is stored in a column in the product table... but I can't figure how to do it with Doctrine.

Any idea? Thanks.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 3488

Answers (2)

Michaël Perrin
Michaël Perrin

Reputation: 6238

You can use Reference Proxies and do something like this:

$categoryId = 25;
$product->setCategory(
    $entityManager->getReference(Category::class, $categoryId)
);
$entityManager->persist($product);
$entityManager->flush();

Upvotes: 16

Rapishiny
Rapishiny

Reputation: 57

I begin with doctrine so I'm not sure of my answer ^^.

Maybe by creating an attribute that retrieves not the complete object but just the id?

Something like that:

   /**
     * @ORM\Column(name="category_id", type="integer")
     */
    private int $categoryId;

Upvotes: 1

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