Question

My problem is related to the lazy-loading functionality of Doctrine 2.

Let’s say I have these 2 Entities:

• Area
• Venue

Here are quick specs:

• An Area can contain other areas (sub-areas…)
• A Venue is located in only 1 area
• Area::getFullName() should output “Parent area name (if any) > Area name”

My PHP Entities are:

class Area extends AbstractEntity {
/**
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Area", inversedBy="children")
 */
private $parent;

public function getFullName() {
    if (!isset($this->fullName)) {
        $this->fullName = ($this->getParent() ? $this->getParent()->name . ' > ' : '') . $this->name;
    }
    return $this->fullName;
}

class Venue extends AbstractEntity {

/** 
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Area")
 */
private $area;

Let’s say that area “Paris” contains a subarea named “Center”

If I call:

$area = $repoArea->findByUrl("paris/center")
echo $area->getFullName();
// --> "Paris > Center"

So far, so good.

But let’s say now, that the “Fouquet’s” restaurant is one Venue in the center of Paris:

$venue = $repoVenue->findByName("Fouquet's");
echo $venue->getArea()->getFullName()
// --> " > Center"

The parent area name (–> “Paris”) is not output…

$this->fullName = ($this->getParent() ? $this->getParent()->name . ' > ' : '') . $this->name;

But the parent Area Proxy Object is not NULL. It is just not initialized. And so calling the property “name” returns NULL.

It seems that “double” (or “many-to-one of many-to-one”…) lazy loading fails. Something like:

$venue->getArea()->get(Parent)Area()->name

Answer 1

Properties should never be public when using Doctrine. This will lead
to bugs with the way lazy loading works in Doctrine.

Source: Doctrine’s Getting Started

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Basically, you should add a getName() method to your Area class and use ->getName() instead of ->name so Doctrine can intercept the call and load the Proxy object’s data. 😉