Symfony2 : Many-To-Many with a custom link table

Question

I'm working on a form with 3 entities :

• order (idorder)
• support reference table (idsupport)
• link table (idorder, idsupport)

And when i try to select one or more support i got this error:

Catchable Fatal Error: Argument 1 passed to Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastCmdsupports::setIdsupports() must be an instance of Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastSupports, instance of Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection given, 
called in C:\wamp\www\php\Symfony\vendor\symfony\src\Symfony\Component\Form\Util\PropertyPath.php on line 347 and defined in C:\wamp\www\php\Symfony\src\Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastCmdsupports.php line 62 

Since i already created my link table i saw on the web that i can simply create 2 Many-To-One relation in my link table :

/**
 * @var PcastSupports
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="PcastSupports")
 * @ORM\JoinColumns({
 *   @ORM\JoinColumn(name="IDSUPPORTS", referencedColumnName="IDSUPPORTS")
 * })
 */
private $idsupports;

/**
 * @var PcastOrder
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="PcastOrder")
 * @ORM\JoinColumns({
 *   @ORM\JoinColumn(name="IDORDER", referencedColumnName="IDORDER")
 * })
 */
private $idorder;

and my setters and getters :

/**
 * Set idsupports
 *
 */
public function setIdsupports(\Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastSupports $idsupports)
{
    $this->idsupports = $idsupports;
}

/**
 * Get idsupports
 *
 */
public function getIdsupports()
{
    return $this->idsupports;
}

/**
 * Set idorder
 *
 */
public function setIdcommande(\Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastOrder $idorder)
{
    $this->idorder = $idorder;
}

/**
 * Get idorder
 *
 */
public function getIdorder()
{
    return $this->idorder;
}

In my order form i can choose one or many supports so i created my form like this:

$form_clips = $this->createFormBuilder($cmdclips)
->add('idorder', new CmdsupportsType)
->getForm();

And finally my supportsType form:

$builder
    ->add('idsupports', 'entity', array(
    'class'         => 'MyappMyBundle:PcastSupports', 
    'property'      => 'name',
    'expanded'      => true,
    'multiple'      => true,
    'query_builder' => function(EntityRepository $er) 
    {
        return $er->createQueryBuilder('pts')
        ->orderBy('pts.idsupports','ASC');
    },
));

I'm not using any arraycollection so i don't understand the issue. And the issue happened during this action:

$form_clips->bindRequest($request);

Thank a lot for your help !

---

I tried to make it work with the many-to-many relation in a simple case (user, company and a user_company entities) but i got a problem when i try to add a company to a user:

Warning: oci_bind_by_name() [<a href='function.oci-bind-by-name'>function.oci-bind-by-name</a>]: Invalid variable used for bind in C:\wamp\www\php\Promocast\Symfony\vendor\doctrine-dbal\lib\Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\OCI8\OCI8Statement.php line 113

I googling a lot but i didn't find anything on this error... According to stack trace the error is when doctrine try to add the company object :

array('column' => ':param10', 'variable' => object(PcastCompany), 'type' => '1')

My user entity (societe = company):

/**
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="PcastSociete", inversedBy="users")
 * @ORM\JoinTable(name="PcastLienusersociete",
 *   joinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="ImUser_iduser", referencedColumnName="iduser")},
 *   inverseJoinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="PcastLienusersociete_idsociete", referencedColumnName="idsociete")}
 * )
 */
private $societes;

public function getSocietes()
{
    return $this->societes;
}

public function addSociete(\Myapp\MyBundle\Entity\PcastSociete $societe)
{
    $this->societes[] = $societe;
}

My company entity:

/**
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="ImUser", mappedBy="societes")
 */
private $users;

public function __construct() {
    $this->users = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();
}

If anybody have any idea...

Thanks

Answer 1

Start with the basics. I was curious about something else concerning ManyToMany so I grabbed your entities as a test case. Before diving into forms and such, make sure you can execute a simple test case from the command line such as:

use Zayso\ArbiterBundle\Entity\PcastSociete as Company;
use Zayso\ArbiterBundle\Entity\ImUser       as User;

protected function test1()
{
    $em = $this->getContainer()->get('doctrine.orm.entity_manager');
    $company = new Company();
    $em->persist($company);

    $user = new User();
    $user->addSociete($company);
    $em->persist($user);

    $em->flush();

}

For entities I used:

namespace Zayso\ArbiterBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 */
class ImUser
{
/**
 * @ORM\Id
 * @ORM\Column(type="integer",name="iduser") 
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue
 */
protected $id;

public function getId()    { return $this->id; }

/**
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="PcastSociete", inversedBy="users")
 * @ORM\JoinTable(name="PcastLienusersociete",
 *   joinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="ImUser_iduser", referencedColumnName="iduser")},
 *   inverseJoinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="PcastLienusersociete_idsociete", referencedColumnName="idsociete")}
 * )
 */
private $societes;

public function getSocietes()
{
    return $this->societes;
}

public function addSociete(PcastSociete $societe)
{
    $this->societes[] = $societe;
}
public function __construct() 
{
    $this->societes = new ArrayCollection();
}

}

namespace Zayso\ArbiterBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 */
class PcastSociete
{
/**
 * @ORM\Id
 * @ORM\Column(type="integer", name="idsociete") 
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue
 */
protected $id;

public function getId()    { return $this->id; }

/**
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="ImUser", mappedBy="societes")
 */
private $users;

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

Get the above working then we can move on to the forms problem.

Answer 2

You should not have an entity representing the link table. If you annotate both your entities correctly, Doctrine will handle the creation of the link table by itself.

Moreover, you do not need any link table to do a Many-to-One relationship in the first place, what you want to do is use the Many-to-Many annotations in both entities.

http://readthedocs.org/docs/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/association-mapping.html?highlight=many%20to%20one#many-to-many-bidirectional