Call to a member function format() on a non-object in Symfony2 (Doctrine)

Question

I have the some bug in my controller.

I'd config the entity by this config:

pv\MyBundle\Entity\NewsAuthorHistory:
  type: entity
  table: news_authors_history
  fields:
    id:
      id: true
      type: integer
      unsigned: false
      nullable: false
      column: id
      generator:
        strategy: AUTO
    date:
      type: datetime
      nullable: true
      column: date
    author_id:
      type: integer
      unsigned: true
      column: author_id
      nullable: false
    news_id:
      type: integer
      unsigned: true
      column: news_id
      nullable: false
  manyToOne:
    news:
      targetEntity: pv\MyBundle\Entity\News
      joinColumn:
        name: news_id
        referencedColumnName: id
    author:
      targetEntity: pv\MyBundle\Entity\Authors
      joinColumn:
        name: author_id
        referencedColumnName: id

I have this code in my controller

$history_event = new NewsAuthorHistory();
$history_event->setAuthorId($author->getId());
$history_event->setNewsId($news->getId());
$history_event->setDate(\DateTime('now'));

$em->persist($history_event);
$em->flush();

But, If I try to run this code, I have the the

Fatal error: Call to a member function format() on a non-object in /vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Types/DateTimeType.php on line 53

I'd read a lot of posts about this error, but could not find a suitable solution for me.

UPDATE: Some magic! O_o I added the following code to the file DateTimeType.php

if (!method_exists($value, 'format')) {
  var_dump($value); 
  var_dump(debug_backtrace()); 
} 

And here the magic begins… To the date field filled… with information about csrf-token. How? Why? — I don't know… :(

Unfortunately, I could not resolve the problem. I solved this problem by SQL-code generation and directing its implementation in the entity-manager.

Answer 1

$history_event->setDate(\DateTime('now'));

should be

$history_event->setDate(new \DateTime());

Your error is that you're not instantiating a DateTime object that is what your entity expects. Moreover remember that now is default argument for DateTime .

Edit

Could you try, just before creating a new DateTime to insert this snippet of code?

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York'); //Just an example to understand what's going on

Answer 2

following your update I modified my convertToDatabaseValue in DateTimeType.php to this:

public function convertToDatabaseValue($value, AbstractPlatform $platform)
{
    if(is_array($value)){
        $value = date_create($value['year'].'-'.$value['month'].'-'.$value['day']);
    }
    return ($value !== null)
        ? $value->format($platform->getDateTimeFormatString()) : null;
}

Now it works.