Symfony2: Doctrine does not load related objects in many ways to many

Question

I have a many-to-many relationship, and when I load an object that is on the one hand, this relationship, I expect to see its ArrayCollection property of related objects on the other hand. However, this does not happen - there are no elements in the loaded ArrayCollection array, while in the database I see related records. What could be the reason?

Here is my code:
One side of the relationship, the ConsolidatedReport class:

/** * @var ArrayCollection * * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="P24\Response", inversedBy="consolidatedReports") * @ORM\JoinTable(name="con_rprt_responses") */ private $responses; 

The other side of the relationship, the response class:

 /** * @var ArrayCollection * * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="P24\ConsolidatedReport\ConsolidatedReport", mappedBy="responses") */ private $consolidatedReports; 

Here is the function that I run to get an instance of ConsolidatedReport. This function is inside the service called from the container:

 /** * Picks the consolidated report with given id. * * @param string $id * * @return ConsolidatedReport * * @throws NonExistentConsolidatedReportException if the survey doesn't exist */ public function pick($id) { $report = $this->repository->findOneBy(array('id' => $id)); if (!$report) { throw new NonExistentConsolidatedReportException($id); } return $report; }' 

The database has a table called "con_rprt_responses" with two columns, "united_reports_id" and "response_id". However, in the profiler, I do not see any queries on this table.

What could go wrong here?

UPDATE: Please see my answer to this question below, which worked for me.

Answer 1

I added fetch="EAGER" to the $ response property of the ConsolidatedReport class and it worked.

Now the code is as follows:

 /** * @var ArrayCollection * * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="P24\Response", inversedBy="consolidatedReports", fetch="EAGER") * @ORM\JoinTable(name="con_rprt_responses") */ private $responses; 

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

Nevertheless, if someone knows why the collection of the associated object will not be loaded without explicitly specifying the EAGER selection, please share your knowledge, we greatly appreciate it!

Answer 2

If you specify joinColumns, will this solve your problem?

 /** * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="P24\Response", inversedBy="consolidatedReports") * @ORM\JoinTable(name="con_rprt_responses", * joinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="consolidated_reports_id", referencedColumnName="id")}, * inverseJoinColumns={@ORM\JoinColumn(name="response_id", referencedColumnName="id")} * ) */ 

Answer 3

* ToMany properties must be initialized with an ArrayCollection.

 public function __construct() { $this->responses = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection(); $this-> consolidatedReports = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection(); } 

Answer 4

If you have more than one query to retrieve the same objects using Doctrine, try using:

 $entityManager->clear(); 

between them to fix the "missing" entities. This is not an “as is” solution, but it can give you an idea of ​​something wrong in your request chain.