Doctrine 2 MongoDb ODM references

Question

I have a question related to Doctrine 2 MongoDB ODM in php.

So I have an EntityA and within EntityA I would like to reference EntityB via EntityB 's ObjectId . So in EntityA I have a variableA with the following Docblock: @ODM\\ReferenceOne(targetDocument="EntityB", simple="true") .

The problem is when i call the setMethod it sets the whole of EntityB into EntityA and not just the objectId which is what I would like to do.

Basically EntityA looks like this:

ENTITYA {
    randomFieldA,
    randomFieldB,
    EntityB ObjectId
}       

Does anyone know if what I want is possible like how I have tried? or does someone know a better way?

Basically like this example:

/** @Document */
class TopCategory 
{

    /** @EmbedMany(targetDocument="SubCategory") */
    private $subCategories;

}

/** @EmbeddedDocument */
class SubCategory 
{

    /** @ReferenceOne(targetDocument="Product") */
    private $product;

}


/** @Document */
class Product
{

    /** @id */
    private $id;

    /** @String */
    private $name;

}

Now how do i store only the id of the product and not the entire product in subCategory->product ?

Answer 1

This is how the ODM works. On the object-side, you add a whole Product to SubCategory .

Your Mongo database will only store the reference, eg (in your Subcategory item)

"product": {
    "$ref": "Product",
    "$id": ObjectId("4b0552b0f0da7d1eb6f126a1")
}

To create the relationship, you simply set your Product into the SubCategory , eg

// $product is a persisted Product object
$subcategory->setProduct($product);

To get the Product ID from SubCategory , you just use

$productId = $subcategory->getProduct()->getId();

(assuming you have the appropriate setter and getter methods defined)

---

You use references when you want to create a relationship to a stand-alone document. This is particularly true where you may want to link to one document (like your Product ) from many other documents (like your SubCategories ).

Embedded documents are used when you only want that document as part of its parent.