Tricks with ArrayCollection

Hey orys

Ryan likes to save the best to the end :D

Hey Raphael!

This is the big disadvantage of using Doctrine's array type (array or json_array). You can't really query on this - it's ultimately just a string in the database. However, you can technically query a "fuzzy" query - but it's a little ugly:

$this->createQueryBuilder('u')
    ->andWhere('u.roles LIKE :roleSearch')
    ->setParameter('roleSearch', '%ROLE_USER%')
    ->getQuery()
    ->execute();

If all you need are simple queries - this works in practice. However, if you need to do more complex query, then you'll may need another solution. In this case, I would create a Role entity (it would basically just have a string "role" property) and make a ManyToMany relationship from User to Role. Your User class would look something like this:

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Role")
     */
    private $roleObjects;

    // initialize roleObjects to an ArrayCollection in __construct()

    public function getRoles()
    {
        $roles = [];
        foreach ($this->roleObjects as $roleObject) {
            $roles[] = $roleObject->getRole();
        }

        return $roles;
    }

    // add setter and getter for roleObjects like normal

As you can see, you create a normal ManyToMany relationship, then simply loop over that relationship to return the array of string roles in getRoles() (which is what Symfony's security system wants). Then, you can properly query for exact matches.

Cheers!

Yeah.. its really ugly... but it worked... !!! cheers!!!

i`ll try the second way later... it seems to be good!!

Thank you for answering me daily!!! i asked around 10 questions... you`re rock!!!

Hey Helene Shaikh!

Hmm, so I don't know the answer exactly - I would expect you to get autocomplete there. However, I can tell you a bit about what's going on :). In showAction, we query for the $genus using $em->getRepository(...). If you have the Symfony plugin installed and enabled for this project, it should be smart enough to know that the findOneBy method will return a Genus object. And so, it should auto-complete when you call $genus->getNotes(). The fact that you can't go to the declaration of getNotes() tells me that PhpStorm - for some reason - doesn't realize that $genus is a Genus object. You can always hint it if you want to:

/** @var Genus $genus */
$genus = $em->getRepository('AppBundle:Genus')
    ->findOneBy(['name' => $genusName]);

In getNotesAction, we relied on the automatic query mechanism so that we have getNotesAction(Genus $genus) where we've type-hinted the $genus argument. In this case, thanks to the type-hint, PhpStorm 100% knows that $genus is a Genus object and so you can happy autocompletion.

Cheers!

Same for me

Hey Ruben,

Does Ryan's comment below help you? I think "@var Genus $genus" annotation should do the trick. Also, please, ensure you have a proper return annotation for Genus::getNotes() method to get further autocompletion. And I'd recommend to upgrade PhpStorm and its plugins if you don't yet.

Cheers!

Yo Maksym,

`$this->get('logger')` or `$this->container->get('logger')`, which is the same, is a service call. Service container returns a Logger object which you can use in order to make some logs in your app. Actually, this course is the 4th in the Symfony 3 track. Please, check the previous one out where we explain some basic things about Service Container and Dependency Injection.

Cheers!

I just wonder how it has appeared miraculously between the chapters...

Well, some Symfony-related courses imply basic Symfony background.