Question

In my project I need to store role hierarchy in database and create new roles dynamically.
In Symfony2 role hierarchy is stored in security.yml by default.
What have I found:

There is a service security.role_hierarchy (Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Role\RoleHierarchy);
This service receives a roles array in constructor:

public function __construct(array $hierarchy)
{
    $this->hierarchy = $hierarchy;

    $this->buildRoleMap();
}

and the $hierarchy property is private.

This argument comes in constructor from \Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\DependencyInjection\SecurityExtension::createRoleHierarchy()
which uses roles from config, as I understood:

$container->setParameter('security.role_hierarchy.roles', $config['role_hierarchy']);

It seems me that the best way is to compile an array of roles from database and set it as an argument for the service. But I haven’t yet understood how to do it.

The second way I see is to define my own RoleHierarchy class inherited from the base one. But since in the base RoleHierarchy class the $hierarchy property is defined as private, than I would have to redefine all the functions from the base RoleHierarchy class. But I don’t think it is a good OOP and Symfony way…

Answer 1

The solution was simple.
First I created a Role entity.

class Role
{
    /**
     * @var integer $id
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer")
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    private $id;

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

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Role")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="parent_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     **/
    private $parent;

    ...
}

after that created a RoleHierarchy service, extended from the Symfony native one. I inherited the constructor, added an EntityManager there and provided an original constructor with a new roles array instead of the old one:

class RoleHierarchy extends Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Role\RoleHierarchy
{
    private $em;

    /**
     * @param array $hierarchy
     */
    public function __construct(array $hierarchy, EntityManager $em)
    {
        $this->em = $em;
        parent::__construct($this->buildRolesTree());
    }

    /**
     * Here we build an array with roles. It looks like a two-levelled tree - just 
     * like original Symfony roles are stored in security.yml
     * @return array
     */
    private function buildRolesTree()
    {
        $hierarchy = array();
        $roles = $this->em->createQuery('select r from UserBundle:Role r')->execute();
        foreach ($roles as $role) {
            /** @var $role Role */
            if ($role->getParent()) {
                if (!isset($hierarchy[$role->getParent()->getName()])) {
                    $hierarchy[$role->getParent()->getName()] = array();
                }
                $hierarchy[$role->getParent()->getName()][] = $role->getName();
            } else {
                if (!isset($hierarchy[$role->getName()])) {
                    $hierarchy[$role->getName()] = array();
                }
            }
        }
        return $hierarchy;
    }
}

… and redefined it as a service:

<services>
    <service id="security.role_hierarchy" class="Acme\UserBundle\Security\Role\RoleHierarchy" public="false">
        <argument>%security.role_hierarchy.roles%</argument>
        <argument type="service" id="doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager"/>
    </service>
</services>

That’s all.
Maybe, there is something unnecessary in my code. Maybe it is possible to write better. But I think, that main idea is evident now.