I am just starting to use Doctrine again after a long break. I used
Doctrine before lightly, more so following simple examples in a tutorial.
Now, I am evaluating using it in a real project that uses multiple
databases and joins that span across several databases and tables. So far
I am using it for new functionality only.
Functionality is as follows -- given a list of many services, each service
falls into one of the few categories. To select required service faster,
users are to select their category first, upon which they are shown
services from that category only and then they can select appropriate
service. I've decided to create two entities in this case, ServiceLineItem
(description), and ServiceCategory. And set up ManyToOne relationship like
so:
class ServiceLineItem
{
/**
* @ManyToOne(targetEntity="ServiceCategory")
*/
private $category;
}
*Task*
Select all services in ServiceLineItem, with chosen ServiceCategory of
"Testing".
Using SQL I would do it like so:
-- Exhibit 1 --
select *
from service_line_item
join service_category on service_line_item.service_category_id =
service_category.id
where service_category.category = "Testing";
Or I could do it like so, without the JOIN if I have to:
$id = ... select id from service_category where category = "Testing";
--
select * from service_line_item where service_category_id = $id;
*My problem is as so:*
- My expectations of Doctrine were that there would be a simple
auto-magical way to retrieve data for a common JOIN pattern like in Exhibit
1.
The relationship association is already defined! Might there be an
extra method to invoke that connection implicitly?
So far, people tell me that I have to write a custom DQL with custom
class extending EntityRepository and using createQueryBuilder(), where(),
setParameter() and innerJoin().
It may be fine and great for extra custom cases, but it is a lot of
overhead to learn new API and use it in the code especially for something
fairly common and simple like my use case (I would think).
I ponder the efforts of learning DQL API when I already know how to call
an already-complex enough and already-known-to-me SQL directly, with
mysqli. I see this (DQL, etc) as being potentially more trouble than it's
worth.
The above has me question how far I want to go into Doctrine if it is going
to place a lot of custom DQL API into the codebase both for me and for
others to learn.
Alternatively, it seems it'd be easier to do something like this instead,
effectively breaking removing the JOIN, avoiding custom DQL, but leaving no
power for Doctrine....
Entity\ServiceLineITem
Am I using this correctly? Is there a philosophy behind Doctrine that I
am missing? Did I perhaps miss a feature?
My trial move towards using Doctrine was in hopes that it will manage SQL
creation&modification for me (it mostly does), use InnoDB (it does), set up
FK+Referential Integrity (it does), and simplify data Input/Output (so far
... it does not, not to my "lazy programmer" satisfaction)
Thanks!
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