Symfony form CollectionType Field

Question

Hi I'm quite new in Symfony 2. I'm dealing with this problem for several hours by now, so I'm forced to ask comunity.

I have two Entities

User --> Language (OneToMany)

User Entity

/**
 * 
 * @ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="User_Language", mappedBy="user")
 */
private $languages;

public function __construct() {
    $this->languages = new ArrayCollection();
}

User_Language Entity

/** @ORM\Column(type="string", length=50) */
private $language;

/**
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User", inversedBy="languages")
 */
private $user;

User_LanguageTyp

public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options) {

    $builder
        ->add( 'language' );
}

I'm trying to build a form where user can add/edit/delete his speaking languages

User_Language in Database

When getting data from database (in controller) - with $user->GetLanguages() I got persistantCollection, with QueryBuilder() I got an array

Is there any way, how to pass this into CreateForm() function?

$form = $this->createForm( User_LanguageType::class, $user->getLanguages() );

I'm getting this two erros:

The form's view data is expected to be an instance of class ArpanetRuzicja7EstatesBundle\Entity\User_Language, but is an instance of class Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection.

or

The form's view data is expected to be an instance of class ArpanetRuzicja7EstatesBundle\Entity\User_Language, but is a(n) array. You can avoid this error by setting the "data_class" option to null or by adding a view transformer that transforms a(n) array to an instance of ArpanetRuzicja7EstatesBundle\Entity\User_Language.

Setting 'data_class' => null , did not help.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

If you want to allow your user to add/delete any number of languages, you have to use a collection type field. http://symfony.com/doc/2.7/reference/forms/types/collection.html

Here to use it: http://symfony.com/doc/2.7/form/form_collections.html

You create a form for the user entity, you add the collection field type on your User_languageType, and you have to add some javascript to manage adding and deleting language.

I don't write all the example, the symfony doc is already perfect for that :)

But I assume you already have a Form/userType, you can add the collection field :

->add('tags', 'collection', [
        'type'         => New User_LanguageType(),
        'allow_add'    => true,
        'allow_delete' => true,
    ]);

(for symfony3)

->add('tags', 'collection', [
        'type'         => User_LanguageType::class,
        'allow_add'    => true,
        'allow_delete' => true,
    ]);

The array short syntaxe [] needs php5.4 min, if not use array()