Two one-to-many relationship with reference table (Doctrine 2, ZF2) - doctrine-orm

Question

I've a problem with my many-to-many relation. I want to have access to the reference table for a querybuilder query. With a many-to-many relation I don't have access to my reference table, so I've set up two one-to-many relationships. My structure look likes:
User ---> UserUserCategory <--- UserCategory
The above structure has two one-to-many relationships and are working fine with the database. When I have a user with the following data in the database (in UserUserCategory):
Table User
ID | Name
1 | Bart
2 | Gerard
Table Category
ID | Name
1 | Officer
2 | Medic
Table UserUserCategory
User | Category
1 | 1
2 | 2
So Bart is an Officer and Gerard is a Medic. But when I want to retrieve the data, it said that Bart is the Medic, and Gerard has a "null" value in the category.
My User-entity:
/**
* Entity Class representing a post of our User module.
*
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="user")
* #ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="User\Repository\UserRepository")
*
*/
class User extends zfcUser implements UserInterface
{
/**
* Categories from user
*
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="User\Entity\UserUserCategory", mappedBy="user_id", cascade={"remove", "persist"})
* #var UserUserCategory
* #access protected
*/
protected $user_usercategories;
//name & user_id comes here
/**
* Constructor to make a new ArrayCollection for addresses
*
*
*/
public function __construct()
{
$this->user_usercategories = new ArrayCollection();
}
/**
* #param Collection $categories
*/
public function addUserUserCategories(Collection $user_usercategories)
{
foreach ($user_usercategories as $user_usercategorie) {
$user_usercategorie->setUser($this);
$this->user_usercategories->add($user_usercategorie);
}
}
/**
* #param Collection $categories
*/
public function removeUserUserCategories(Collection $user_usercategories)
{
foreach ($user_usercategories as $user_usercategorie) {
$user_usercategorie->setUser(null);
$this->user_usercategories->removeElement($user_usercategorie);
}
}
/**
* #return Collection
*/
public function getUserUserCategories()
{
return $this->categories;
}
}
My UserCategory-entity:
/**
* A User category entity.
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(uniqueConstraints={#ORM\UniqueConstraint(name="unique_name_parentId", columns={"name", "parent_id"})})
* #ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
*/
class UserCategory extends Category
{
/**
* User_usercategories
*
* #ORM\OneToMany(targetEntity="User\Entity\UserUserCategory", mappedBy="category_id")
* #var UserUserCategory
* #access protected
*/
protected $user_usercategories;
/**
* Constructor
*/
public function __construct()
{
$this->user_usercategories = new ArrayCollection();
}
/**
* #param Collection $categories
*/
public function addUserUserCategories(Collection $user_usercategories)
{
foreach ($user_usercategories as $user_usercategorie) {
$user_usercategorie->setCategory($this);
$this->user_usercategories->add($user_usercategorie);
}
}
/**
* #param Collection $categories
*/
public function removeUserUserCategories(Collection $user_usercategories)
{
foreach ($user_usercategories as $user_usercategorie) {
$user_usercategorie->setCategory(null);
$this->user_usercategories->removeElement($user_usercategorie);
}
}
/**
* #return Collection
*/
public function getUserUserCategories()
{
return $this->categories;
}
}
My UserUserCategory-entity:
/**
* Entity Class representing a post of our User_UserCategory entity.
*
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="user_usercategory")
*
*/
class UserUserCategory
{
/**
* User with a category
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User\Entity\User", inversedBy="user_usercategories")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="user_id", referencedColumnName="user_id", nullable=false, onDelete="CASCADE")
* #ORM\Id
*
* #var User
* #access protected
*/
protected $user_id;
/**
* Category from user
*
* #ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="User\Entity\UserCategory", inversedBy="user_usercategories")
* #ORM\JoinColumn(name="category_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=false, onDelete="CASCADE")
* #ORM\Id
*
* #var Category
* #access protected
*/
protected $category_id;
public function getUser()
{
return $this->user;
}
/**
* Set User
*
* #param User $user
* #return User
*/
public function setUser(User $user = null)
{
//die('setUser');
$this->user = $user;
return $this;
}
public function getCategory()
{
return $this->category;
}
/**
* Set Category
*
* #param Category $category
* #return Category
*/
public function setCategory(Category $category = null)
{
$this->category = $category;
return $this;
}
}
When I execute the following line, it gives back the wrong result. The wrong category pops up:
\Doctrine\Common\Util\Debug::dump($this->getEntityManager()->find('User\Entity\User', '49')->user_usercategories);
die;
Result:
array(1) {
[0]=>
object(stdClass)#452 (3) {
["__CLASS__"]=>
string(28) "User\Entity\UserUserCategory"
["user_id"]=>
string(16) "User\Entity\User"
["category_id"]=>
string(24) "User\Entity\UserCategory"
}
}
In the category_id is the medic printed, I expect the officer to get back.
In my other user, (id=60) the category_id field is "null". So it look likes Doctrine skips the first input in my UserUserCategory, starts with the second and can't get the last category anymore.

Answer 1

No offence, but I find your code very hard to read. I would suggest you to do few corrections and that might even help you in solving the problem.
1: Naming: Instead of UserCategory, rename it to Category. If your Category will have different types, create new column "type" with values from constansts like
class Category
{
const TYPE_USER = 1 ;
....
2: Instead of addCategories(Collection $array), do singular version like
public function addCategory(Category $category)
{
$reference = new UserCategory() ;
$reference->setUser($this) ;
$reference->setCategory($category) ;
$this->user_categories->add($reference) ;
}
public function removeCategory(Category $category)
{
foreach($this->user_categories as $reference) {
if ( $reference->getCategory() === $category )
$this->user_categories->removeElement($reference) ;
}
}
Symfony2 automaticaly recognizes methods like this. Even if your relation is plural (like categories), s2 will find singularified addCategory and removeCategory methods.
To get array of categories, use this:
public function getCategories()
{
$categories = new ArrayCollection() ;
foreach($this->user_categories as $reference) {
$categories->add( $reference->getCategory() ) ;
}
return $categories ;
}
If you do it like this, you will probably solve the problem you have.