Symfony2 Form FormType Itself collection

Question

I'm trying to create a symfony 2 form 'PersonType', which has a PersonType collection field that should map a given person's children.

And I'm getting this error,

{"message":"unable to save order","code":400,"errors":["This form should not contain extra fields."]}

Here is my Person entity,

class Person
{
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="Person", mappedBy="parent", cascade={"persist"})
     */
    private $children;

    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Person", inversedBy="children")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="orderitem_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
     */
    private $parent;

}

And my Type,

class PersonType extends AbstractType
{
    /**
     * @param FormBuilderInterface $builder
     * @param array $options
     */
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder
            ->add('id')
            ->add('children', 'collection', array(
                'type' => new PersonType()
            ))
        ;
    }

UPDATE : I've seen that the problem was because the option :

'allow_add' => true,
'by_reference' => false

wasn't in the Type, I've deleted it because when i insert them, the form don't appear and the page crash with no error.

I'm very confused because with this error, people can't have children :/

Does anyone already faced the same problem? (A formType nested over itself)

ACUTALLY : I've duplicate my personType to PersonchildrenType to insert this last in the first...

Answer 1

I was having the same problem except that the error message was :

FatalErrorException: Error: Maximum function nesting level of 'MAX' reached, aborting!

Which is normal because "PersonType" is trying to build a form with a new "PersonType" field that is also trying to build a form with a new "PersonType" field and so on...

So the only way I managed to solve this problem, for the moment, is to proceed in two different steps :

1. Create the parent
2. Create a child and "link" it to the parent

You can simply do this in your controller

public function addAction(Person $parent=null){
    $person = new Person();
    $person->setParent($parent);

    $request = $this->getRequest();
    $form    = $this->createForm(new PersonType(), $person);
    if($this->getRequest()->getMethod() == 'POST'){
        $form->bind($request);

        if ($form->isValid()) {
            // some code here
            return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('path_to_person_add', array(
                'id'    => $person->getId()
            ); //this redirect allows you to directly add a child to the new created person
        }
    }
    //some code here
    return $this->render('YourBundle::yourform.html.twig', array(
        'form'    => $form->createView()
    ));
}

I hope this can help you to solve your problem. Tell me if you don't understand something or if I'm completly wrong ;)

Answer 2

Try to register your form as a service, like described here: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/forms.html#defining-your-forms-as-services , and modify your form like this:

class PersonType extends AbstractType
{
    public function getName()
    {
        return 'person_form';
    }

    /**
     * @param FormBuilderInterface $builder
     * @param array $options
     */
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder
            ->add('id')
            ->add('children', 'collection', array(
                'type' => 'person_form',
                'allow_add' => true,
                'by_reference' => false
            ))
        ;
    }
}