Question

I have premiere_poland column in database table which is date type.

/** @Column(type="date", nullable=TRUE) */
    protected $premiere_poland;

My issue is, that I want to store dates like 2012-01-01, 2013-00-00, 2013-01-00 etc. and I want that type of dates, but Doctrine every time returns that column data in DateTime instance and the true form is changed (for ex. 2013-01-00 = 31.12.2012).

How can I make Doctrine to return this value as a string, not DateTime class instance.

My query:

    $q = "SELECT
            g,
            p.name AS platform_name, p.name_short AS platform_name_short, p.id AS platform_id,
            s.premiere_poland, s.premiere_world
          FROM Game g
            JOIN g.genres ge
            JOIN g.platform p
            LEFT JOIN g.specification s
          WHERE g.id = :id";
    $results = $db->createQuery($q)->setParameter('id', $_GET['id'])->getResult();

Answer 1

@Crozin Because I need column which stores games date premieres and the premiere can be not fully known (for ex. March 2013 or only year).

I would suggest to create two columns, one for a date (of type DateTime/DATE) and another that would indicate what parts of date (day, month, year) should be taken into account when displaying a premiere date (of type SET or a bit mask).

Function that displays a premiere date could look like this:

// "parts" is a name of the last column - it should be renamed into something
// more adequate. Names of constants also aren't well adequate

function getFormattedPremiereDate() {
    if ($this->abc & Game::SHOW_YEAR_ONLY) {
        return $this->premierePoland->format('%y');
    }

    if ($this->abc & Game::SHOW_YEAR_AND_MONTH_ONLY) {
        return $this->premierePoland->format('%m %y');
    }

    if ($this->abc & Game::SHOW_DATE) {
        return $this->premierePoland->format('%d %m %y');
    }
}

Of course this function shouldn’t be placed whitin an entity object – it’d be too complex (especially if we take i18n and i10l into account) and “unrelated” to the entity.

This techinque should let you show following dates:

• June 12, 2012 (12-06-2012, Game::SHOW_DATE),
• 2015 (01-01-2015, Game::SHOW_YEAR),
• March, 2012 (01-03-2012, Game::SHOW_MONTH),
• Summer, 2020 (01-06-2012, Game::SHOW_SEASON), Winter, 2010 (01-12-2010, Game::SHOW_SEASON)