limit columns returned in relationnal entity symfony2

Question

Is it possible to filter an entity and display only few columns in symfony2? I think I can do a custom query for this, but it seems a bit dirty and I am sure there is a better solution. For example I have my variable $createdBy below, and it contains few data that shouldnt be displayed in this parent entity such as password etc...

/**
 * @var Customer
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="MyCompany\Bundle\CustomerBundle\Entity\Customer")
 * @ORM\JoinColumns({
 *   @ORM\JoinColumn(name="created_by", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=false)
 * })
 */
protected $createdBy;

So I need to display my Customer entity, but only containing fields like id and name for example. EDIT : I already have an instance of Project, the entity with my createdBy field, and I want to grab my customer data 'formatted' for this entity and not returning too much fields like password ...

Thanks

Answer 1

It sounds like expected behavior to me. The doctrine documentation seems to imply that eager fetching is only one level deep.

According to the docs:

Whenever you query for an entity that has persistent associations and these associations are mapped as EAGER, they will automatically be loaded together with the entity being queried and is thus immediately available to your application.

http://doctrine-orm.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference/working-with-objects.html#by-eager-loading

The entity being queried has eager on createdBy so it will be populated.

to bypass you can create a method in your entity repository as following :

// join entities and load wanted fields
     public function findCustom()
        {
            return $this->getEntityManager()
                ->createQuery(
                    'SELECT p FROM AppBundle:Product p ORDER BY p.name ASC'
                )
                ->getResult();
        }

hope this helps you

try this and let me know if it works, you should fill the right repository name

'XXXXBundle:CustomerYYYY', 'c'

public function findUser($user_id){

 $qb = $this->_em->createQueryBuilder('c')
            ->select(array('c', 'cb.id', 'cb.name'))
            ->from('XXXXBundle:Customer', 'c')
            ->where('c.id <> :id')
            ->leftJoin('c.createdBy', 'cb')
            ->setParameter('id', $user_id)->getQuery();
if ($qb != null)
            return $qb->getOneOrNullResult();
        return null;
}