ZF2 Doctrine Entity findAll - doctrine-orm

Question

Being able to use Doctrine speeds up a lot of things however it feels somewhat clunky to me having to set / use the entity manager in all of my controllers. I would prefer to have all of the database logic in 1 specific module. Perhaps I'm just thinking about this the wrong way, and someone can point me in the right direction.
Currently I have my Entity which functions just fine and I can do insertions into the database fine with the following
namespace Manage\Controller;
use Zend\Mvc\Controller\AbstractActionController;
use Zend\View\Model\ViewModel;
class ViewController extends AbstractActionController {
public function somethingAction(){
$objectManager = $this->getServiceLocator()->get('Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager');
$user = new \Manage\Entity\User();
$user->setname('foo');
$user->settitle('bar');
$objectManager->persist($user);
$objectManager->flush();
}
}
However whenever I want to select something from the database I have to make sure to add
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
And then the following list of Controller functions...
/**
* #var EntityManager
*/
protected $entityManager;
/**
* Sets the EntityManager
*
* #param EntityManager $em
* #access protected
* #return PostController
*/
protected function setEntityManager(EntityManager $em) {
$this->entityManager = $em;
return $this;
}
/**
* Returns the EntityManager
*
* Fetches the EntityManager from ServiceLocator if it has not been initiated
* and then returns it
*
* #access protected
* #return EntityManager
*/
protected function getEntityManager() {
if (null === $this->entityManager) {
$this->setEntityManager($this->getServiceLocator()->get('Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager'));
}
return $this->entityManager;
}
Once I have added all of that I can now do a query in my getsomethingAction like so...
public function getsomethingAction() {
$repository = $this->getEntityManager()->getRepository('Manage\Entity\User');
$list = $repository->findAll();
var_dump($list);
return new ViewModel();
}
To me that feels very clunky... I can do an insert without needing all the extra functions but I cannot do a select? Is it possible to extend the Entity class in order to get the find / findAll etc functions that is provided by calling $repository = $this->getEntityManager()->getRepository('Manage\Entity\User'); directly inside the entity?
By that I mean I would prefer to be able to run the find directly on the entity as I would when I set the data... like below:
public function getsomethingAction(){
$list = new \Manage\Entity\User();
$l = $list->findAll();
var_dump($l);
return new ViewModel();
}

Answer 1

Ok so my main objective so far has been to move the complex logic out of the controllers into a re-usable model. So with this example answer I'm creating an interface where the complex logic would live however it also allows me to still use the model in a controller to get data from the database... here is the Model...
namespace Manage\Model;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
class ApiInterface {
/**
* #var EntityManager
*/
protected $entityManager;
protected $sl;
/**
* Sets the EntityManager
*
* #param EntityManager $em
* #access protected
* #return PostController
*/
protected function setEntityManager(EntityManager $em) {
$this->entityManager = $em;
return $this;
}
/**
* Returns the EntityManager
*
* Fetches the EntityManager from ServiceLocator if it has not been initiated
* and then returns it
*
* #access protected
* #return EntityManager
*/
protected function getEntityManager() {
if (null === $this->entityManager) {
$this->setEntityManager($this->sl->get('Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager'));
}
return $this->entityManager;
}
public function __construct($ServiceLocator) {
$this->sl = $ServiceLocator;
}
public function get() {
$repository = $this->getEntityManager()->getRepository('Manage\Entity\ApiList');
return $repository;
}
public function set() {
return new \Manage\Entity\ApiList();
}
public function save($data) {
$objectManager = $this->sl->get('Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager');
$objectManager->persist($data);
$objectManager->flush();
}
public function doComplexLogic($foo,$bar){
// Can now use both set() and get() to inspect/modify/add data
}
}
So now inside my controller I can do something that gets some basic data from the table like:
public function getapiAction() {
$api = new \Manage\Model\ApiInterface($this->getServiceLocator());
var_dump($api->get()->findAll());
return new ViewModel();
}
And to quickly set data from a controller I can do:
public function setapiAction() {
$apiInterface = new \Manage\Model\ApiInterface($this->getServiceLocator());
$api= $apiInterface->set();
$user->setfoo('blah');
$user->setbar('moo');
$apiInterface->save($api);
return new ViewModel();
}
And it also allows me to run complex logic from the controller by taking the complexity out of the controller like so...
public function complexAction(){
$foo = $this->params()->fromQuery();
$bar = $this->params()->fromPost();
$apiInterface = new \Manage\Model\ApiInterface($this->getServiceLocator());
$apiInterface->doComplexLogic($foo, $bar);
}
Please let me know in comments if this answer would be the proper way to do things, I realize it's very simple and generic but I wanted to keep it that way so others can understand what / why and if this is a good approach / not etc.