Doctrine Class Table Inheritance can not remove() entity

Question

I try to implement Doctrine's Class Table Inheritance. My Application needs a User Entity that is used to authenticate the user through Symfony's security system. On top of that, my application needs a special kind of User, a Doctor. Below you can find excerpts of my Entity classes.

User class (Base):

/**
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="AppBundle\Repository\UserRepository")
 * @ORM\Table(name="user")
 * @UniqueEntity("email")
 * @ORM\InheritanceType("JOINED")
 * @ORM\DiscriminatorColumn(name="discr", type="string")
 * @ORM\DiscriminatorMap({"user" = "User", "doctor" = "Doctor"})
 */
class User implements UserInterface, \Serializable, EquatableInterface {

/**
 * @ORM\Id()
 * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="uuid_binary")
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="CUSTOM")
 * @ORM\CustomIdGenerator(class="Ramsey\Uuid\Doctrine\UuidGenerator")
 * @JMS\Type("uuid")
 */
private $id;

// More fields that are used for authenticating a user (password, email, etc.)

}

Doctor Entity extends User:

/**
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="AppBundle\Repository\DoctorRepository")
 * @ORM\Table(name="doctor")
 * @ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks()
 */
class Doctor extends User {

 /**
 * @ORM\Column(name="title", type="string")
 */
private $title;

// More fields that extend the User Entity

}

Weirdly I can neither delete Users nor the Doctors using the EntityManager's remove() method, which I have never had problems with. When I use the method no errors are thrown or logged, but the Entity instance remains in the database.

// This does not work. The user stays persisted in the database.
public function deleteUserAction($id) {
    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
    $user = $em->getRepository('AppBundle:User')->find($id);
    if(empty($user)) {
        return new View('User not found', Response::HTTP_NOT_FOUND);
    }
    $em->remove($user);
    $em->flush();
    return new View('Deleted user', Response::HTTP_OK);
}

I found a workaround using a manual query to delete the object from the database.

// This works. The User is deleted from the database.
// If the user is a doctor the doctor referencing the user id is also
// deleted.
$qb = $em->createQueryBuilder()
        ->delete('AppBundle:User', 'u')
        ->where('u.id = :id')
        ->setParameter('id', $id, 'uuid_binary');
$qb->getQuery()->execute();
return $user;

So I could just use the code above, but I still would like to know what causes this problem to occur? Thanks in advance!

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 12 '18 at 16:08

0

When you do not use the SchemaTool to generate the required SQL you should know that deleting a class table inheritance makes use of the foreign key property ON DELETE CASCADE in all database implementations. A failure to implement this yourself will lead to dead rows in the database.

Reference: Doctrine 2 documentation:

Running this SQL query like following may solve your problem

ALTER TABLE user 
ADD CONSTRAINT fk_user_1
FOREIGN KEY (id_user)
REFERENCES doctor (id_user)
ON DELETE CASCADE
ON UPDATE NO ACTION;

answered Jan 12 '18 at 16:08

Łukasz D. Tulikowski

1,440
1
17
36

Thanks for the answer. I used the schema tool however. So that should not be an issue. Also I think it would just leave dead rows in the child table if you delete the parent (or in the parent table if you delete the child). In my case nothing happens. – Momomentum Jan 12 '18 at 16:41

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 12 '18 at 16:37

0

Maybe if you use cascade works, look at this documentation about doctrine cascade: http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/working-with-associations.html#transitive-persistence-cascade-operations

answered Jan 12 '18 at 16:37

Jasson Rojas

299
3
12

Doctrine Class Table Inheritance can not remove() entity

2 Answers2