Question

Right now I’m using Doctrine2 in conjunction with Symfony2. I have an entity called “OrderRequest” with contains two references to another entry type called “OrderRequestPerson” (these are the orderer and receiver fields). In my form the user has the option to set the orderer = receiver or to fill out the receiver information.

I have a bug in this specific case: an order is placed where orderer = receiver, thus in the database the orderer and receiver fields have the same value (15 in this case, referring to the OrderRequestPerson id). If an admin goes and updates the order to where the orderer != receiver, I need to update the receiver field. Currently the entity manager will update the OrderRequestPerson with the id of 15, which consequently updates both the orderer and receiver. Is there a way I can tell Doctrine2 / Symfony2 to create a new entry for the receiver, with a new id and place the information into that entry rather than updating the orderer information?

My code is posted below:

    //  Get the entity manager.
    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager();

    //  Grab the order.
    $order = $em->getRepository('OrderRequestBundle:OrderRequest')
                ->getOrder($id);

    //  Get important information.
    $request = $this->getRequest();

    //  Create the OrderRequest form.
    $form = $this->get('form.factory')->create(new OrderRequestType(), $order);

    //  Fill the form with the request information.
    $form->bindRequest($request);

    //  Save the information.
    $em->flush();

Answer 1

You basically have to detach the entity from the entity manager and then persist it again, which will force it to be inserted as a new one.

$person = $order->getReceiver();
$em->detach($person);
$em->persist($person);
$order->setReceiver($person);

Now the problem is, you should only do that if the form is going to modify one or the other independently.

I guess you could do it always before binding the form, and then if you see that both receiver and orderer contain the same data, you discard the receiver (don’t forget to remove or at least detach it from the $em), and set the orderer as the receiver again.

I hope this makes sense. Be careful though otherwise you’ll end up with tons of duplicated and orphaned data in your db I think.

You can read more on detach in the doctrine docs.