Doctrine 2 Many To Many follower relationship not working - doctrine-orm

Question

I have followed the example here doctrine 2 documentation and made the entity
<?php
namespace Account\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
use Zend\Filter\Null;
/**
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="accounts")
*/
class Account
{
/**
* #ORM\Id
* #ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
* #ORM\Column(type="integer")
* #ORM\Column(length=11)
*/
private $id;
// ......
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Account\Entity\Account", mappedBy="following")
*/
private $followers;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Account\Entity\Account", inversedBy="followers")
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="followers",
* joinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="account_id", referencedColumnName="id")},
* inverseJoinColumns={#ORM\JoinColumn(name="follower_id", referencedColumnName="id")}
* )
*/
private $following;
public function __construct(){
$this->followers = new ArrayCollection();
$this->following = new ArrayCollection();
}
/**
* #param mixed $followers
*/
public function setFollowers($followers)
{
$this->followers[] = $followers;
}
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function getFollowers()
{
return $this->followers;
}
public function addFollowers($followers){
foreach($followers as $follower)
$this->followers->add($follower);
}
public function removeFollowers($followers){
$this->followers->removeElement($followers);
}
/**
* #param mixed $following
*/
public function setFollowing($following)
{
$this->following[] = $following;
}
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function getFollowing()
{
return $this->following;
}
public function addFollowing($followers){
foreach($followers as $follower)
$this->following->add($follower);
}
public function removeFollowing($followers){
$this->following->removeElement($followers);
}
/**
* #param mixed $id
*/
public function setId($id)
{
$this->id = $id;
}
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function getId()
{
return $this->id;
}
}
So I have 2 accounts (ids 1 and 2) and made it so that 1 follows (is friend to) 2.
The column is something like
user_id follower_id
2 1
By using the following code, I'm not getting any results as I should
$user = $this->entityManager()->getRepository('Account/Entity/Account')->find(1);
$followers = $user->getFollowers();
var_dump($followers);
It returns something like:
object(Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection)#357 (9) { ["snapshot":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> array(0) { } ["owner":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> NULL ["association":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> NULL ["em":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> NULL ["backRefFieldName":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> NULL ["typeClass":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> NULL ["isDirty":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> bool(false) ["initialized":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> bool(false) ["coll":"Doctrine\ORM\PersistentCollection":private]=> object(Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection)#358 (1) { ["_elements":"Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection":private]=> array(0) { } } }
The same happens if I use getFollowing and all the combinations I've tried. Am I missing something? I mean it's pretty much like the documentation code, please help me out!
I'm using Zend Framework 2, if that's of any help.

Answer 1

All associations are LAZY by default, which means it is populated when you first access it. PersistentCollection actually is an iterator and a var_dump will not trigger iteration, that's why you see _intialized property set to false and the count of _elements is 0.
You can use getArrayCopy or simply iterate through the collection.
var_dump($followers->getArrayCopy());
or:
foreach ($followers as $follower) {
var_dump($follower);
}