Month: November 2020

As a newcomer to Doctrine I had to google and dig to figure this out. Explanation here.

Symfony DoctrineMigrationsBundle documentation here.

Doctrine, doctrine migrations documentation here.

Basically if you want to remove a column from a table when using Doctrine and Symfony Entities all you do is remove the variable and the matching getter/setter methods from the Entity, then run a diff.

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:diff

instead of making a migration, this command makes the migration file for you. Then you can run this command to change the table.

Make sure you don’t have other migrations ready before running this command or all of them get executed. You can follow the advice in the console after issuing the above command and use “execute” instead with the name of the exact migration you want to use.

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

What is happening is Doctrine ORM is used to map the Database tables to an Entity. Every Doctrine/Symfony Entity matches 1 table in a database.

Lets view an example. This Entity should be familiar to anyone who created an app using the Symfony maker system. User.php should be located in app\src\Entity\User.php and it looks basically like this.

<?php namespace App\Entity; use App\Repository\UserRepository; use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface; /** * User * * @ORM\Table(name="user", uniqueConstraints={@ORM\UniqueConstraint(name="email_UNIQUE", columns={"email"})}, indexes={@ORM\Index(name="email", columns={"email"})}) * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass=UserRepository::class) */ class User implements UserInterface { /** * @var int * * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="bigint", nullable=false, options={"unsigned"=true}) * @ORM\Id * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY") */ private int $id; /** * @var string * * @ORM\Column(name="email", type="string", length=255, nullable=false) */ private string $email; /** * @var string * * @ORM\Column(name="password", type="string", length=255, nullable=false) */ private string $password; /** * @var array|null * * @ORM\Column(name="roles", type="json", nullable=true) */ private ?array $roles; /** * @var string|null * * @ORM\Column(name="web_token", type="string", length=255, nullable=true) */ private ?string $webToken; /** * @var string|null * * @ORM\Column(name="api_token", type="string", length=255, nullable=true) */ private ?string $apiToken; public function getId(): ?string { return $this->id;
    }

    public function getEmail(): ?string
    {
        return $this->email;
    }

    public function setEmail(string $email): self
    {
        $this->email = $email;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getPassword(): ?string
    {
        return $this->password;
    }

    public function setPassword(string $password): self
    {
        $this->password = $password;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getRoles(): ?array
    {
        return $this->roles;
    }

    public function setRoles(?array $roles): self
    {
        $this->roles = $roles;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getWebToken(): ?string
    {
        return $this->webToken;
    }

    public function setWebToken(?string $webToken): self
    {
        $this->webToken = $webToken;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getApiToken(): ?string
    {
        return $this->apiToken;
    }

    public function setApiToken(?string $apiToken): self
    {
        $this->apiToken = $apiToken;

        return $this;
    }


    public function getSalt()
    {
        // TODO: Implement getSalt() method.
    }

    public function getUsername(): ?string
    {
        // TODO: Implement getUsername() method.
        return $this->getEmail();
    }

    public function eraseCredentials()
    {
        // TODO: Implement eraseCredentials() method.
    }
}

As you can see I have a web token and api token in this class. If I wanted to remove the web token from my database I simply remove the relate variable and getter/setters like so.

<?php namespace App\Entity; use App\Repository\UserRepository; use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface; /** * User * * @ORM\Table(name="user", uniqueConstraints={@ORM\UniqueConstraint(name="email_UNIQUE", columns={"email"})}, indexes={@ORM\Index(name="email", columns={"email"})}) * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass=UserRepository::class) */ class User implements UserInterface { /** * @var int * * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="bigint", nullable=false, options={"unsigned"=true}) * @ORM\Id * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY") */ private int $id; /** * @var string * * @ORM\Column(name="email", type="string", length=255, nullable=false) */ private string $email; /** * @var string * * @ORM\Column(name="password", type="string", length=255, nullable=false) */ private string $password; /** * @var array|null * * @ORM\Column(name="roles", type="json", nullable=true) */ private ?array $roles; /** * @var string|null * * @ORM\Column(name="api_token", type="string", length=255, nullable=true) */ private ?string $apiToken; public function getId(): ?string { return $this->id;
    }

    public function getEmail(): ?string
    {
        return $this->email;
    }

    public function setEmail(string $email): self
    {
        $this->email = $email;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getPassword(): ?string
    {
        return $this->password;
    }

    public function setPassword(string $password): self
    {
        $this->password = $password;

        return $this;
    }

    public function getRoles(): ?array
    {
        return $this->roles;
    }

    public function setRoles(?array $roles): self
    {
        $this->roles = $roles;

        return $this;
    }

   

    public function getApiToken(): ?string
    {
        return $this->apiToken;
    }

    public function setApiToken(?string $apiToken): self
    {
        $this->apiToken = $apiToken;

        return $this;
    }


    public function getSalt()
    {
        // TODO: Implement getSalt() method.
    }

    public function getUsername(): ?string
    {
        // TODO: Implement getUsername() method.
        return $this->getEmail();
    }

    public function eraseCredentials()
    {
        // TODO: Implement eraseCredentials() method.
    }
}

Now when you run the migrations:diff command a new migration file will be created. Inside that file will be the queries to make the changes in the “up” method of that migrations file. In the “down” method you will find the code to restore the database and add the column back, which will also update the Entity class.

After you run the diff you run a migration. Running the migration changes your database to match your changes in your Entity class.

Tips

#1 One entity at a time

The first tip I’d give is to work on only one entity at a time. That means change only one entity file, then run the diff, then migrate. You will often run into issues and it is easier to fix those issues one at a time than many at once.

#2 Check for indexes

When you remove a column, look to the top of the file to make sure there are not any indexes on those columns or else you will get errors.

#3 Give divorces

Make sure you note any column that is used in any entity relationship, you will need to give them proper divorces. LOL Basically if you have two tables that are linked by an id, don’t delete an entity if that entity is referred to in another entity. This will get barf all over you.

First find all the entities that your entity is referred to in and delete each one. then you can delete the entity itself. The easy way to do this is to use your IDE to “Find usages” of the class. Find each entity file that uses it and delete the reference. Also delete the import statement.