Symfony 2 / Oracle Querybuilder result is case sensitive

Question

I have a strange behavior with a query result in Symfony 2. I have data like this in an Oracle Database, in this exact order :

1. BU 4 2015
2. bU 2
3. BU C
4. BU S
5. BU 4 2014

notice, the lower case in the second data

I Just want to display this list by alphabetical order, without any case sensitive support. The wanted result :

- BU C
- bU 2
- BU 4 2014
- BU 4 2015
- BU S

Now, here is the Querybuilder, made with Symfony 2.5.12 :

 $queryBuilder = $this->createQueryBuilder('e');
 $queryBuilder->orderBy('e.name');

But the query, show my list in this order :

- BU C
- BU 4 2014
- BU 4 2015
- BU S
- bU 2

• When i play the query displayed in symfony 2 profiler in my Oracle database client, i get the wanted result.

• When i dump the query builder result, I get the wrong order list.

I manage to solve my problem by this

$queryBuilder = $this->createQueryBuilder('e');
$queryBuilder
    ->select(e)
    ->addSelect('UPPER(e.name) as HIDDEN name')
    ->orderBy('name');

So, I just want to know why I get this strange behavior with the querybuilder ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

First of all, your "wanted result" is not actually in alphabetical order. A case-insensitive sort would yield the following order:

bU 2
BU 4 2014
BU 4 2015
BU C
BU S

Second of all, the way to do a case-insensitive sort with Oracle SQL is to use UPPER() or LOWER() on the column(s) you want to sort by, like so:

SELECT *
FROM e
ORDER BY UPPER(e.name);

Finally, the way to do a case-insensitive sort with Doctrine QueryBuilder is exactly how you have done it: by adding UPPER(e.name) as HIDDEN name and then sorting by that field.

There is no strange behavior by QueryBuilder in this example.