Doctrine2 - Annotations: eager load (join) vs. nullable column (ManyToOne) - doctrine-orm

Question

I have this:
/**
* #ManyToOne(targetEntity="TblCity",fetch="EAGER",cascade={"persist"})
* #JoinColumn(name="tblCity",referencedColumnName="Id")
*/
and it creates the correct JOIN for table tblCity in sql and TblCity entity is plugged in my parent entity - aka "Eager-Load"
Pseudo result:
PersonEntity: {
Id: 1
...
CityEntity: {
Id: 1
...
}
}
but, this column NEEDS to be nullable
(if it runs into a "missing" foreign id it complains about missing proxy files for TblCity).
So it has to look like this:
/**
* #Column(nullable=true)
* #ManyToOne(targetEntity="TblCity",fetch="EAGER",cascade={"persist"})
* #JoinColumn(name="tblCity",referencedColumnName="Id")
*/
and poff there goes the "Eager-Load"
The generated sql is missing the JOIN of table tblCity and the column contains only the id and not the entity for TblCity
Pseudo result:
PersonEntity: {
Id: 1
...
CityEntity: 1 (as integer)
}
What am I doing wrong?
PS: I CAN'T use createQuery or such things, so please no solutions involving that

Answer 1

The doctrine #JoinColumn annotation has an optiobal attribute nullable which defaults to true. Read more on this here in the documentation: 21.2.15. #JoinColumn
So the proper way to declare nullable for the join column is:
#JoinColumn(name="tblCity",referencedColumnName="Id", nullable=true)
But nullable is true by default so you don't really need it...
My guess would be that your #Column annotation is overruling the whole #ManyToOne annotation in your case. That is why you get only an id and no TblCity entity.