Symfony data fixtures on ManyToMany relationship

Question

I have two entities Categories and Criteria that are linked by ManyToMany relationship. It generated a new table named as criteria_categories in the database. What i want to do is to use fixture to populate the entity Criteria and the table criteria_categories . The categories table has already data in the database.

So my problem is, how to get the data from categories and insert them using fixtures into the criteria_categories table ?

My code is as follow:

Criteria

class Criteria
{
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Categories", inversedBy="criteria", cascade={"persist"})
     * @ORM\JoinTable(name="criteria_categories")
     **/
    private $categories;
}

Categories

class Categories
{
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Criteria", mappedBy="categories")
     **/
    private $criteria;
}

DataFixtures

class LoadCriteria extends Fixture
{
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        $criteria = array(
            array(
                'label' => 'Test1'
            ),
            array(
                'label' => 'Test2'
            )
        );
        $cat = new Categories();

        foreach ($criteria as $critere) {
            $ctr = new Criteria();
            $ctr->setCriteriaLabel($critere['label']);
            $manager->persist($ctr);
        }

        $manager->flush();
    }

}

So the real question is how to get the data from categories and use them here in this fixture to populate the table criteria_categories ?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

Answer 1

In doctrine you can forget on criteria_categories table. The class criteria has a collection of categories . Don't need to worry about additional tables used behind the scenes.

But to your question. To get all categories from the db, you have to define this fixture as a service and then inject an entity manager or your "wrapper" service.

class LoadCriteria extends Fixture
{
    /**
     * @var CategoriesRepository
     */
    private $repository;

    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
    {
        $this->repository = $em->getRepository(Categories::class);

    }
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        $this->categories = $repository->findAll();

        $criteria = array(
            array(
                'label' => 'Test1'
            ),
            array(
                'label' => 'Test2'
            )
        );
        $cat = new Categories();

        foreach ($criteria as $critere) {
            $ctr = new Criteria();
            $ctr->setCriteriaLabel($critere['label']);
            $manager->persist($ctr);
        }

        $manager->flush();
    }
}

1. If you use default service configuration from symfony 3.3+, your fixture is already a service.

2. If you don't use default service configuration, you have to define the fixture as service manually by.

    #services.yml App\\DataFixtures\\ORM\\CriteriaFixture: tags: [doctrine.fixture.orm]