PHP Enums

Hey Oliver,

That's a fair question if I understand it correctly :) If you're worry about data loss - make sense. That's easy to implement it on an empty DB or when you create a new column that just does not exist on production yet. But if you already have some VARCHAR strings that you want to properly convert to ENUM. First of all, IIRRC the migration should do all the job for you, you just need to create the full ENUM, i.e. ENUM with all the possible values on your production. here's the steps to follow:

1. Analyze current data, for example with SELECT DISTINCT status FROM your_table.
2. Create the PHP Enum with the values from the query above
3. Update your Doctrine entity to use the Enum type
4. Create the migration.

You will need to dobule-check the migration, e.g. create some fake data locally, try to migrate and see if that lead to any data loss or no. If everything work correctly and you covered all the possible values - that just should work for prod as well.

I hope this helps!

Cheers!

Hi desanchextorres,
thank you very much für this adivse.
I tried to create a new field first, that is of type enum, but I stopped with the error, that with
symfony console make:entity
I received the error
[ERROR] Class "ExerciseCategory" doesn't exist; please enter an existing full class name.
However it does exist.
How can I reference enums in make:entity correctly?
For example my enum is located under
src/Entity/ExerciseCategory.php

Oliver

Hey Oliver,

It should work with just class name, i.e. ExerciseCategory should be ok, but please double check that you don't have any misprints in it or in the file name and class name in that file. Also, that entity should be in src/Entity/ExerciseCategory.php and has App\Entity namespace there. If still no success, probably try to update the maker bundle, not sure why it does not work for you.

If just class name does not work:

symfony console make:entity ExerciseCategory

You can also try to specify the full class name like:

symfony console make:entity App\\Entity\\ExerciseCategory

But it's a weird error, because even if the file does not exist, it would still create it then. So I bet you just made a misprint somewhere :)

Btw, make:entity --help sometimes may help.

Cheers!

Hi Victor,
I guess I was not precise enough in my description:
I have en existing entity:

namespace App\Entity;

use App\Repository\ExerciseRepository;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection;
use Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Types;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

#[ORM\Entity(repositoryClass: ExerciseRepository::class)]
class Exercise
{
    #[ORM\Id]
    #[ORM\GeneratedValue]
    #[ORM\Column]
    private ?int $id = null;

    #[ORM\Column(length: 255)]
    private ?string $name = null;
    
...
}

and I have a new created enum

<?php
namespace App\Entity;

enum ExerciseCategory: string
{
    case WARMUP = 'warmup';
    case COMPETITION = 'competition';
    case TECHNIC = 'technic';
}

Now I want to add a new attribute to entity Exercise that is of type ExerciseCategory. For this I wanted to use
symfony console make:entity
->

 Class name of the entity to create or update (e.g. DeliciousElephant):
 > Exercise
 Your entity already exists! So let's add some new fields!

 New property name (press <return> to stop adding fields):
 >  exerciseCategory

 Field type (enter ? to see all types) [string]:
 > enum
 
 Enum class:
 > ExerciseCategory           

 [ERROR] Class "ExerciseCategory" doesn't exist; please enter an existing full class name.    
                                                                                   

I am pretty sure, that it will work manually by creating the attribute exerciseCategory like this
private enum ExerciseCategory exerciseCategory;
by hand. But I wanted to try it with the console command.

Hey Oliver,

Ah, I see now :) OK, first of all ExerciseCategory is not an entity, right? That's why it should not be inside the src/Entity/ class... Create a different folder for it in the src/ e.g. src/Enums/ or src/Model/ or src/Category/ and move that file there. Don't forget to change the namespace correspondingly!

Next, run that make:entity command again, and when you will choose enum - write the full namespace to the file, e.g. App\Enums\ExerciseCategory. In some cases, you may need to escape back slashes. So if that will not work - try: App\\Enums\\ExerciseCategory.

Cheers!