Question

I have a controller which has actions for inserting in the database, updating, deleting and some others, but almost all of the actions contain in them this lines:

$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager(); 
$friend = $em->getRepository('EMMyFriendsBundle:Friend')->find($id);
$user = $this->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser();

Is this OK, or it’s code duplication? I tried to make a property called $em and to have a constructor like this:

public function __construct()
{
    $this->em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager();
}

but it didn’t work. As for the queries especially the one with the $id parameter, I don’t even know how to separate them in one place, so each action to be able to use them. One way is a function, but is there sense in a function like this? And if yes what should it return? An array?

Please advise me for the optimal way!

Answer 1

You can do:

private $em;
private $friend;
private $user;

private function init($id==null) {
    $this->em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager(); 
    $this->friend = $id?$this->em->getRepository('EMMyFriendsBundle:Friend')->find($id):null;
    $this->user = $this->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser();
}

Then you can call in your actions

$this->init($id);

or

$this->init();

And you will have

$this->em;
$this->friend;
$this->user;

available. Note that I allowed for the $id parameter not to be set, as I guess that in some actions you will not have it.

If you want this init function to be available in different controllers, create a base controller and extend from it, as suggested in another answer.