Question

I’m coding a website using CodeIgniter 2 as my framework, and I recently started trying to use Doctrine 2 for ORM.

My database needs to store spatial data (e.g. a column of “point” type), and apparently Doctrine cannot handle that out of the box.

I have searched all over the internet and have only found these tips: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2011/02/19/using-spatial-data-in-doctrine-2/

But that article is unclear about where to save those files and what else needs to be configured. I tried contacting the author and never heard back.

Could someone please help?

Thanks!
Ryan

Answer 1

It was a long time ago so I’ve forgotten some details, but I put these 4 files in a folder called CodeIgniter/application/libraries/Doctrine/CustomAddon:

• Distance.php
• Point.php
• PointStr.php
• PointType.php

I set the namespace of each as “CustomAddon”.

Then at the bottom of CodeIgniter/application/libraries/Doctrine.php I put:

require_once APPPATH . 'libraries/Doctrine/CustomAddon/Distance.php';
require_once APPPATH . 'libraries/Doctrine/CustomAddon/Point.php';
require_once APPPATH . 'libraries/Doctrine/CustomAddon/PointStr.php';
require_once APPPATH . 'libraries/Doctrine/CustomAddon/PointType.php';
Doctrine\DBAL\Types\Type::addType('point', 'CustomAddon\PointType');
//Assuming $config is a Doctrine\ORM\Configuration object used to configure the EM
$config->addCustomNumericFunction('DISTANCE', 'CustomAddon\Distance');
$config->addCustomNumericFunction('POINT_STR', 'CustomAddon\PointStr');

// Create EntityManager
$this->em = EntityManager::create($connectionOptions, $config);

Then usage looks something like this:

$point = new \CustomAddon\Point($geo['lat'], $geo['lon']);