must return a string value in zend2. How? - doctrine-orm

Question

I have a problem with a zend2 form. I made an entity which gets some data from the database and joins some tables...
here is the entity:
class Campaigns
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
protected $id;
/**
*
* #ORM\Column(name="campaign_name", type="string")
*
*/
protected $campaigns;
/**
* #var mixed
*
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Application\Entity\Countries", cascade={"persist"}, orphanRemoval=false)
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="campaigns_countries",
* joinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="campaign_id", referencedColumnName="id", onDelete="CASCADE")},
* inverseJoinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="country_id", referencedColumnName="id", onDelete="CASCADE")}
* )
*/
protected $countries;
Below this code are the getters and setters, a construct function, an add and an remove function.
Here they are:
public function getId()
{
return $this->id;
}
public function setId($id)
{
$this->id = $id;
return $this;
}
public function getCampaigns()
{
return $this->campaigns;
}
public function setCampaigns($campaigns)
{
$this->campaigns = $campaigns;
return $this;
}
public function addCampaigns($campaigns = null)
{
foreach ($campaigns as $c) {
if (!$this->campaigns->contains($c)) {
$this->campaigns->add($c);
}
}
}
public function removeCampaigns($campaigns)
{
foreach ($campaigns as $c) {
if ($this->campaigns->contains($c)) {
$this->campaigns->removeElement($c);
}
}
}
public function getCountries()
{
return $this->countries;
}
public function setCountries($countries)
{
$this->countries = $countries;
return $this;
}
public function addCountries($countries = null)
{
foreach ($countries as $c) {
if (!$this->countries->contains($c)) {
$this->countries->add($c);
}
}
}
public function removeCountries($countries)
{
foreach ($countries as $c) {
if ($this->countries->contains($c)) {
$this->countries->removeElement($c);
}
}
} //construct for countries
public function __construct()
{
$this->setCountries(new ArrayCollection());
}
My problem is with the protected $countries. If i add in the form the property value, it gives me the "countries" property not found in entity.
If I do not add it, and instead use __toString() function, it gives me an error saying that it could not convert countries to string...in the __toString() function I added the following code:
public function __toString()
{
return $this->countries;
}
Thank you for all your help!
AE

Answer 1

You say you want a string containing all related countries. The following code demonstrates how you could achieve this:
$campaignCountryNames = array();
$campaignCountries = $campaign->getCountries();
foreach ($campaignCountries as $country) {
// I assume your Country entity has a name property
$campaignCountryNames[] = $country->getName();
}
echo implode(', ', $campaignCountryNames);