How to cascade a user defined operation on an entity? - doctrine-orm

Question

I'm trying to figure out a way to cascade an operation on all entities associated with an entity. For example, if I have a User, and a user has entities, and those entities have entities, I want to perform an operation on every entity. Specifically I want to perform validation on every entity in that tree.
How would I implement something like 'getAssociatedEntities()':
class User {
/**
* #ManyToOne(targetEntity="Comment")
*/
private $comment;
/**
* #ManyToOne(targetEntity="Something")
*/
private $something;
}
$user->setComment($comment);
$user->setSomething($something);
$associated_entities = $user->getAssociatedEntities(); // NOT A REAL METHOD
foreach ($associated_entities AS $entity) {
validate($entity);
}
I realize I could use lifecycle callbacks to perform validation. However, setting validation annotations makes things sooooo much easier. I can validate every entity I persist, BUT I can't validate its associated entities.

Answer 1

I can validate every entity I persist, but I can't validate its
associated entities.
Of course you can perform any action to entitied associated with main entity if:
You add cascade={"all"} to #ManyToOne definition (required !).
#HasLifecycleCallbacks for each sub-entity you want action performed and mark methods #PrePersist or #PostPersist or more in documentation.
For example I use this method to cascade deletion of image file in the Image entity, while the any entity that contains Image entity is beeing deleted:
Here I have an livecycle callback:
/**
* An image.
*
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="images")
* #ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks
*/
class ImageEntity extends AbstractEntity
{
/**
* #ORM\PreRemove
*/
public function preRemoveDeleteFile()
{
// remoce file
}
}
Here I have an entity that contains Image (where there is a cascade operation defined):
/**
* A competency group name.
*
* #ORM\Entity
* #ORM\Table(name="product_meta_image_cover")
*/
class ProductMetaImageCoverEntity extends AbstractEntity
{
/**
* #var \ModuleModel\Entity\ImageEntity
* #ORM\OneToOne(targetEntity="ModuleModel\Entity\ImageEntity", cascade={"all"}, orphanRemoval=true)
* #ORM\JoinColumn(onDelete="CASCADE")
*/
protected $image;
}