Doctrine 2 QueryBuilder - doctrine-orm

Question

Assuming the following two tables, 'user' and 'friends';
'user'
column: id
column: name
'friends'
column: user_id
column: user2_id
Both columns in the friends table correspond to the user table id column.
Now I can simply find users by partial name with the following;
$query='jim';
$result=$em->getRepository('\User\Entity\User')
->createQueryBuilder('u')
->where('u.name like :match')
->setParameter('match', $query.'%')
->setMaxResults(5)
->getQuery()
->getResult();
Now assuming an object of \User\Entity\User userA, how would I do a partial string match for all users that userA is not friends with already ?
EDIT Added the Entity definitions
/**
* User
*
* #ORM\Table(name="user", uniqueConstraints={#ORM\UniqueConstraint(name="name_key", columns={"name"})})
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class User
{
/**
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="id", type="bigint", precision=0, scale=0, nullable=false, unique=false)
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #var string
*
* #ORM\Column(name="name", type="string", length=255, precision=0, scale=0, nullable=false, unique=false)
*/
private $name;
}
/**
* UserFriends
*
* #ORM\Table(name="user_friends", indexes={#ORM\Index(name="user_id_key", columns={"user_id"}), #ORM\Index(name="friend_user_id_key", columns={"friend_user_id"})})
* #ORM\Entity
*/
class UserFriends
{
/**
* #var integer
*
* #ORM\Column(name="id", type="bigint", precision=0, scale=0, nullable=false, unique=false)
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
*/
private $id;
/**
* #var \User\Entity\User
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User\Entity\User")
* #ORM\JoinColumns({
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="friend_user_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
* })
*/
private $friendUser;
/**
* #var \User\Entity\User
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User\Entity\User")
* #ORM\JoinColumns({
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
* })
*/
private $user;
}`

Answer 1

We’ll do it in two steps. First, we find out which users they are friends with, then we do a query excluding them.
First, we retrieve an ID list of the user’s friends:
$friendIds = $em->createQuery("
SELECT IDENTITY(uf.user)
FROM User\Entity\UserFriends uf
WHERE uf.user = :id")
->setParameter("id", $userId) // $userId is the ID of the target user
->getResult();
$friendIds = array_map("current", $friendIds); // needed for flattening the array
Now we simply query the user table, excluding the IDs of our friends:
$notMyFriends = $em->createQuery("
SELECT u
FROM User\Entity\User u
WHERE u.id != :ownid
AND WHERE u.id NOT IN (:friends)")
->setParameter("ownid", $userId) // $userId is the ID of the target user
->setParameter("friends", $friendIds)
->getResult();
I’m using plain DQL here, but if you prefer the query builder, you can as well rewrite it to a QB method chain.
(All of the above is from the top of my head, hope it works. If not, please leave a comment and I'll try to fix it.)
By the way, please let me give you a few hints regarding your entity classes:
Entity classes should always be in singular UserFriends → UserFriend.
all of your name="foobar" annotation parameters are redundant, as Doctrine will auto-name your tables, indices and columns.
Same goes for the JoinColumns … you can omit them altogether, unless you want to explicitely change the default behaviour (which you usually don’t).
nullable=true is the default for an xToOne relation, so it can be omitted, too.
nullable=false and unique=false don’t make sense on an ID field. The first is redundant, the second is impossible.