Question

I have an Entity that looks like this:

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

/**
 * @Column(type="string",length=255)
 */
private $name;

/**
 * @Column(type="string",length=255)
 */
private $slug;

/**
 * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Privilege", mappedBy="parent")
 */
private $children;

/**
 * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Privilege", inversedBy="children")
 * @JoinColumn(name="p_id", referencedColumnName="id")
 */
private $parent;

If a Privilege Entity does not have a parent, the field is NULL. I have a basic query like this:

    $qb = $this->em->createQueryBuilder()
        ->select('p')
        ->from('\Dashboard\Entity\Privilege', 'p')
        ->andWhere('p.parent IS NULL');

    $q = $qb->getQuery();
    $privileges = $q->getResult();

I would like the array result I return from this method to look similar to this:

root1:
    child1:
        subchild1a
        subchild2a
   child2:
        subchild1b
        subchild2b
        subchild3b
            subsubchild1b
   child3:
        subchild1c
root2:
....
....

Is there a way to HYDRATE the results from Doctrine 2 so it builds the array results this way? If not, how would you build this array? I am still playing around with Doctrine 2, and I noticed each element in my $privileges array has a $privilege->getChildren() which returns a PersistentCollection, obviously not the actual record.

If I have to build this nested tree myself (ie: no built in way in Doctrine to do it), how do I turn this PersistentCollection returned into the actual data so I can build some sort of recursive method to build it for me? I am looking through the docs, but obviously in the wrong place.

Answer 1

The results are already in a nested tree. The PersistentCollection can be iterated as if it was an array:

foreach($parent->getChildren() as $child) {
    // $child is an instance of Privilige
}

Still you should try $privileges = $q->getArrayResult(); and see if that gives a result you would prefer.