Question

How to implement a search form in a many to many relation between entities.

I want to search items from an entity before to add them to my other entity. I am using a long list of items (product) that i need to link to Shops and i can’t use a simple listbox to select my items.

I need you to point me to a tutorial or any explaination to deal with this interface problem.

The goal is to use a minimum of javascript

Answer 1

I spent lot’s of time trying to figure out the best solution to make the compromise between re-usability, performance and ergonomy and i found a nice solution

I did this way :

• I created a custom form field that show a collection like entity field type but i pass field names that I want to show in a nice table :

  ->add('products','reflist',array(
               'columns'=>array('name','cost','description'),
               'actions'=>array('select'=>true,'remove'=>true),
               'entityName'=>'VendorProductBundle:Product',
               'searchForm'=> 'Vendor\ProductBundle\Form\ProductSearchType'
        ));

• Then I created a generic searching service that takes in input the entity to search on. The result is sent in a popup paginated.

• Finally, I created a controller related to my new field to manage actions like add, remove

Thats’s it for the logic.

I can’t really share the work since it is really dependent of my framework (depend of search service, layout,etc…)