Question

I have a simple entity structure defined in my project:

Country > Region > Province > Town

defined like this :

class Town
{
    /**
     * @Id @Column(type="integer")
     * @GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    private $id;

    /** @Column(type="string", length=30,unique=FALSE) */
    private $townname;

    /** @Column(type="boolean") */
    private $active;

    // so that we know when a user has added a town
    /** @Column(type="boolean") */
    private $verified;


    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Province")
     * @JoinColumn(name="provinces_id", referencedColumnName="id",nullable=FALSE)
     */
    private $provinces_id;

etc.

OK. You get the idea.

Now, if a user has a town (many to one) then I would like to know the province, region and country for that user. I could make a repository method for the town entity that provides this data using SQL or DQL. Something like:

SELECT `users`.`towns_id`,`towns`.`provinces_id`,`regions`.`countries_id`,`provinces`.`regions_id` FROM users , `regions`
LEFT JOIN `towns` ON `users`.`towns_id` = `towns`.`id` 
LEFT JOIN `provinces` ON `towns`.`provinces_id` = `provinces`.`id` 

But this seems wrong, especially since doctrine already ‘knows’ about the relationships between the towns,provinces, regions and countries entities.

Is there an easier way to do this?

Answer 1

In the end I did it like this:

I made the associations bidirectional (although this is probably not necessary):

// in towns entity
    /**
         * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Province", inversedBy="towns")
         * @JoinColumn(name="provinces_id", referencedColumnName="id",nullable=FALSE)
         */
        private $provinces_id;



// in provinces entity

/**
     * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Town", mappedBy="towns")
     */
    private $towns;

    public function __construct() {
        $this->towns = new ArrayCollection();
        $this->active = true;
    }

    public function getTowns() {
        return $this->towns;
    }

You can simply reference a users country like this :

$user = new \Entities\User;
$user = $this->em->getRepository('Entities\User')->findOneByFirstname('test');

$country=$user->getTowns_id()->getProvinces_id()->getRegions_id()->getCountries_id()->getCountryname();