Symfony 2 Doctrine 2 using inversedBy and mappedBy into ManyToMany Relationship?

Question

into Doctrine 2 Documentation explain Owning Side and Inverse Side into ManyToMany Relationship and said that :

For ManyToMany bidirectional relationships either side may be the owning side (the side that defines the @JoinTable and/or does not make use of the mappedBy attribute, thus using a default join table).

Is That mean I can write my annotation without using inversedBy and mappedBy To refer for Owning Side of ManyToMany Relationship and Inverse Side of ManyToMany Relationship ?

Ex:

can i write that :

Affiliate Entity

   /**
     * @var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection
     *
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Category")
     *      
     */        
    private $categories;

and

Category Entity

/**
 * @var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Affiliate")
 * @ORM\JoinTable(name="category_affiliate")
 *      
 */
private $afflitiates;

instead of write that:

Affiliate Entity

   /**
     * @var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection
     *
     * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Category", mappedBy="afflitiates")
     *      
     */        
    private $categories;

and

Category Entity

/**
 * @var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Affiliate",inversedBy="categories")
 * @ORM\JoinTable(name="category_affiliate")
 *      
 */
private $afflitiates;

why don't you just try it out? ;) little hint: The side which has @ORM\JoinTable is automatically the owning side ... so it's npossible for Doctrine to determine the owning side without needing an inversedBy attribute, right? — Nicolai Fröhlich

satdev86 satdev86 · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-21T07:37:19

Incase of Many to Many relationship, you can chose any one side as your owning side and the other automatically turns to be the inversing side. But try to check which entity that you will frequent trigger to get the objects and manage your owning side

Symfony 2 Doctrine 2 using inversedBy and mappedBy into ManyToMany Relationship?

2 Answers