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Working With Entities & Files

You can work with the entities and associated files as usual, and they will work pretty much the way you expect them to work.

Creating an entity, adding it to a file, & persisting it​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use Rekalogika\File\File;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */

$product = new Product();
$image = new File('/tmp/image.png');
$product->setImage($image);

$entityManager->persist($product);
$entityManager->flush();
note

The framework will copy the file to the storage location, and leave the original file alone. It is the responsibility of the caller to delete the original if it wishes to do so.

If the file arrived from a file upload, PHP will delete the file automatically when the request ends.

Replacing an associated file​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use Rekalogika\File\File;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */
/** @var Product $product */

$newImage = new File('/tmp/newImage.png')
$product->setImage($newImage);
$entityManager->flush();

Updating the metadata of an associated file​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

/** @var Product $product */

$product->getImage()?->setName('newImage.png');
note

Files are not Doctrine entities. File modifications are carried out immediately, independent of Doctrine's flush().

Removing an associated file​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */
/** @var Product $product */

$product->setImage(null);
$entityManager->flush();

Removing the entity will also remove the associated file​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */
/** @var Product $product */

$entityManager->remove($product);
$entityManager->flush();

Copying Files Between Entities​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */
/** @var Product $product1 */
/** @var Product $product2 */

$product2->setImage($product1->getImage());
$entityManager->flush();

Moving Files Between Entities​

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

/** @var EntityManagerInterface $entityManager */
/** @var Product $product1 */
/** @var Product $product2 */

$product2->setImage($product1->getImage());
$product1->setImage(null);
$entityManager->flush();

Caveat: Avoid Doctrine's Query::toIterable()​

Doctrine documentation tells us to use Query::toIterable() to iterate over large result sets. This is not recommended because toIterable() may not trigger the postLoad event handler that is necessary for our use case.

We recommend using our rekalogika/rekapager package instead. Read more in our batch processing documentation.