Doctrine, Issue with Custom Join Table

[danielofwarp]

Continuing the discussion from Doctine, Custom Join Table:

@L4DD13

Hi,

I’m currently studying Doctrine 2, but i’m a bit stuck at the moment, every method I’ve tried for the follow has resulted in a fail.

I have the following tables;

• Models - Database table containing basic information such as manufacturer, etc.
• Features - Database table containing generic vehicle features such as air con, abs, etc.

What I’m trying to do is to create a table where the models and features are associated with custom values like this;

+-------------+------------+---------+
| model_id    | feature_id | value   |
+-------------+------------+---------+
| 1           | 20         | 9       |
| 1           | 2          | Leather |
+-------------+------------+---------+

Every time I’ve tried, either the relationships have not worked, or I’ve ended up with a standard many:many table containing just model_id and feature_id.

Cheers

Michael

Done what exactly? How have you solved this particular problem? I am having the same problem myself :-/

Thanks.

[ahundiak]

Going to need a bit more information. I’m assuming you are following the manual: http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/association-mapping.html#many-to-many-unidirectional ?

Would it be possible to check your entities into github and provide a link?

If not then please post the source code for your Model and Feature entities.

[AtliThor]

The concept of creating custom join tables is simple, really. There is no special syntax or relationship declaration needed.

You don’t want Doctrine to be trying to maintain the ManyToMany relationship for you, but instead create it manually by defining a Join Entity and manually creating the required ManyToOne relationships.

Consider this simplified example:

/** @Entity **/
class Shop {
    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class Product {
    // ...
}

/** @Entity **/
class ProductStock {   
    /** @Id @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Shop") **/
    private $shop;
    
    /** @Id @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Product") **/
    private $product
    
    /** @Column(type="integer") **/
    private $amount;
}

Of course this is very generic. If you want more specific help, post more details about your specific situation. The entity definitions would be especially useful.

[ahundiak]

@AtliThor

You don’t want Doctrine to be trying to maintain the ManyToMany relationship for you

Not necessarily. If your join table has no additional attributes then ManyToMany will simplify your code.

But I kind of gather that this is an older thread.

[AtliThor]

@ahundiak, Yes, that’s true, but the question was specifically about custom join tables, as was my answer. I’m certainly not recommending creating custom join tables for ManyToMany relationships that don’t require any custom attributes. Doctrine handles that just fine.

[ahundiak]

My bad. Gotta learn to read the question more carefully.