Symfony2 entity form type not saving many to many

Question

Problem: My many-to-many relationship is not being saved

The form is rendered correctly with checkboxes, and if I manually add a relation between a datatypegroup and a datatype the checkbox is also checked.

But if I check another datatype and save the form, the new relation is not established. I have tried with and without by_reference in the form, but no luck. The addDatatype method on the datatypegroup entity is not called either. Do I really have to loop the form data and find the entities myself?

FormBuilder:

$builder
        ->add('name', 'text')
        ->add('datatypes', 'entity', array(
            'by_reference' => true,
            'multiple' => true,   
            'expanded' => true,   
            'class'    => 'T\DBundle\Entity\Datatype',
            'query_builder' => function(\Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository $er) {
                    $qb = $er->createQueryBuilder('d');
                    return $qb->orderBy('d.name', 'ASC');
            }
        ));

DoctrineMapping:

T\DBundle\Entity\DatatypeGroup:
    type: entity
    table: DatatypeGroup
    manyToMany:
        datatypes:
            targetEntity: T\DBundle\Entity\Datatype
            mappedBy: datatypeGroups

T\DBundle\Entity\Datatype:
    type: entity
    table: Datatype

    manyToMany:
        datatypeGroups:
            targetEntity: T\DBundle\Entity\DatatypeGroup
            inversedBy: datatypes
            joinTable:
                name: Datatype_DatatypeGroup
                joinColumns:
                    datatype_id:
                        referencedColumnName: id
                inverseJoinColumns:
                    datatypeGroup_id:
                        referencedColumnName: id

Controller:

/**
 * @Route("/edit/{id}", name="edit")
 * @Secure("ROLE_USER")
 * @Template("TDBundle:DatatypeGroup:form.html.twig")
 */
public function editAction(Request $request, DatatypeGroup $datatypegroup) {
    $editForm = $this->createForm(new DatatypeGroupType(), $datatypegroup);
    $editForm->handleRequest($request);

    if ($editForm->isValid()) {
        /** @var EntityManager $em */
        $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
        $em->flush();

        return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl("edit",array("id" => $datatypegroup->getId())));
    }

    return array(
        'datatypegroup' => $datatypegroup,
        'form'          => $editForm->createView(),
    );
}

If you expect your addDatatype() method to be called, you should anyway set by_reference to false. Then, I also think you should call $em->persist($datatypegroup); before flushing (unless it's done somewhere else). Last thing: I just checked and the entity field does not have the by_reference property. Did you already try with a collection form type? I think it's the way to go here. — Andrea Sprega
Why is collection form type the way to go? Reading the documentation of symfony.com/doc/current/reference/forms/types/entity.html and symfony.com/doc/current/reference/forms/types/collection.html I believe that the entity form type is the correct as I want it to show all the available options, as the user should not be able to create new entities, just select from the original. — Torben Pi Jensen
I do not need to call persist, the datatypegroup entity is already loaded by the ParamConverter and saving data to this works fine, it is only the relationship between datatypegroup and the datatypes that is not persisted. — Torben Pi Jensen
possible duplicate of Symfony2 Doctrine2 Many To Many Form not Saving Entities — Torben Pi Jensen

Torben Pi Jensen Torben Pi Jensen · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-09T11:53:01

I do not know how to mark this as a duplicate, but I finally found a question answering my question: Symfony2 Doctrine2 Many To Many Form not Saving Entities

The doctrine mapping had to be reversed so that the datatypegroup was the owning type of the relationship.

Symfony2 entity form type not saving many to many

1 Answers