Symfony – My Rant

Symfony2 pagination

Using Symfony2, DQL and knplabs/knp-paginator-bundle – how to get around “Cannot count query which selects two FROM components, cannot make distinction”

Making an entity repository container aware in Symfony2.1

I had a need to add ACL rules to entities at the repository level.

My biggest struggle was getting dependancy injection working.

This is what I finally came up with after a fresh mind and an instant coffee:

Adding extra fields to FOSUserBundle / SonataUserBundle

Sadly, this isn’t really documented (at time of writing).

Adding new protected variables to your User.php entity will not actually create database entries when you try to do a doctrine:schema:update.

While one still needs to have the protected variables in this entity class, along with getters and setters, the actual creation work is within UserBundle/Resources/config/doctrine/User.orm.xml

Here is an example for adding a foreign key:

Symfony 1.4 Doctrine 1.2 MS SQL Server

Web server: Linux (Ubuntu on my dev setup), Apache, PHP 5.3, Symfony 1.4, Doctrine 1.2.
Database server: Microsoft Windows 2008 Server, MS SQL Server

Trying to get Symfony to talk to the database server has been a painful experience for the last few days. But perseverance has paid off.

Lots of Googling with trial & error has resulted in actually achieving a development setup that will mirror the eventual production setup.

Short version:

Follow the FreeTDS and ODBC setup instructions of http://jamesrossiter.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/connecting-to-microsoft-sql-server-using-odbc-from-ubuntu-server/
Use the following in config/databases.yml

all:
  doctrine:
    class: sfDoctrineDatabase
      param:
        dsn: dblib:dbname=datasourcename;host=sqlserver;
        username: ###
        password: ###

In the above snippit, replace ‘datasourcename’ with whatever you used in /etc/odbc.ini and replace ‘sqlserver’ with the name used in /etc/freetds/freetds.conf & /etc/odbc.ini

It’s late and I’ve been struggling to get this working for some time. I may expand this entry in the future if required.

References and insperation:
1) http://blog.acjacinto.com/2011/11/compiling-php-with-mssql-servers-native.html
2) http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28160
3) http://jamesrossiter.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/connecting-to-microsoft-sql-server-using-odbc-from-ubuntu-server/
4) http://trac.symfony-project.org/wiki/HowToConnectToMSSQLServer

How to get sfFormExtraPlugin working in Symfony 1.4 using Doctrine

I’m talking about this plugin: http://www.symfony-project.org/plugins/sfFormExtraPlugin

For some reason, getting the plugin to work took a lot of Googling and some trial and error.
So here is how I got it working. Hopefully I did this in the ‘correct’ way…

cd plugins
wget "http://plugins.symfony-project.org/get/sfFormExtraPlugin/sfFormExtraPlugin-1.1.3.tgz"
tar zxvf sfFormExtraPlugin-1.1.3.tgz
mv sfFormExtraPlugin-1.1.3 sfFormExtraPlugin
cd ..
./symfony plugin:publish-assets
cd web/js
wget "http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.3.min.js"
wget "http://jqueryui.com/download/jquery-ui-1.8.5.custom.zip"
mkdir jquery-ui
cd jquery-ui
unzip ../jquery-ui-1.8.5.custom.zip
mv jquery-ui/css/smoothness ../css

Edit config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php to add sfFormExtraPlugin as an enabled plugin:

class ProjectConfiguration extends sfProjectConfiguration
{
  public function setup()
  {
    $this->enablePlugins(array('sfDoctrinePlugin', 'sfFormExtraPlugin'));
  }
}

Edit apps/<app_name>/config/view.yml to include the JS and CSS:

  stylesheets:    [main.css, smoothness/jquery-ui-1.8.5.custom.css]

  javascripts:    [jquery-1.4.3.min.js, jquery-ui/js/jquery-ui-1.8.5.custom.min.js]

Edit lib/form/doctrine/<your_module_name>Form.class.php to make use of the widgets you want. I’m interested in sfWidgetFormJQueryDate:

  public function configure()
  {
    $this->widgetSchema['created_at'] = new sfWidgetFormJQueryDate(array(
      'image' => '/images/silk_icons/calendar.png',
      'config' => '{}',
    ));
    $this->widgetSchema['updated_at'] = new sfWidgetFormJQueryDate(array(
      'image' => '/images/silk_icons/calendar.png',
      'config' => '{}',
    ));
  }

I have used the calendar.png icon from the famfamfam silk icon set. You can get the set here: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

I’ve used the date picker widget for filling in the created_at and updated_at fields. You can replace these values with the fields you need to manipulate in a user friendly way.

[Edit 17/10/2010:]
I’m not going mad, there is an issue with the ‘magic’ fields created_at and updated_at in that they have to be unset to become magic.
Found help here: http://levelx.me/technology/programming/symfony-1-4-doctrine-timestampable-behaviour/
Though the unset lines are better off being added just once to /lib/form/doctrine/BaseFormDoctrine.class.php, rather than each xxxForm.class.php file.