Symfony-docs: Doctrine entity listeners

Created on 19 Feb 2015 · 17Comments · Source: symfony/symfony-docs

As mentioned at the end of Creating the Listener Class paragraph from event listeners and subscribers doctrine cookbook, entity listeners are introduced in Doctrine 2.4.

An entity listener is a lifecycle listener class used for a specific entity. Entity listeners can be defined as services and the great thing is that they can have container services/parameters injected. Shouldn't this be documented? For example:

services:
    user_listener:
        class: \UserListener
        arguments: 
            - "%some_param%"
        tags:
            - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener }
            - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity_manager: custom }

Entity listeners are barely mentioned here. This was ticket was opened as a suggestion.

Doctrine actionable good first issue

Source

luciantugui

👍4

Most helpful comment

@lucascherifi Is this snippet actually working? I doesn't seem to work for me. I tried to debug this for few hours and find out that listener wont be attached, until there are two tag attributes present: entity and event. The logic is in \Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\DependencyInjection\Compiler\EntityListenerPass::process() function.

There is a condition:

if (isset($attributes['entity']) && isset($attributes['event'])) {
     $this->attachToListener($container, $name, $id, $attributes);
}

So correct minimal example should be something similar to this:

app.event_listener.post:
    class: AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener
    arguments: []
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: prePersist }
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: preUpdate }

I'm using:

doctrine/annotations                 v1.2.7
doctrine/cache                       v1.6.0
doctrine/collections                 v1.3.0
doctrine/common                      v2.6.1
doctrine/data-fixtures               v1.1.1
doctrine/dbal                        v2.5.4
doctrine/doctrine-bundle             1.6.2 
doctrine/doctrine-cache-bundle       1.3.0 
doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle    2.3.0 
doctrine/inflector                   v1.1.0
doctrine/instantiator                1.0.5 
doctrine/lexer                       v1.0.1
doctrine/orm                         v2.5.4
symfony/symfony                      v2.8.2

piotrekkr on 10 Feb 2016

👍3

All 17 comments

:+1: on changing the note in a new section that shows a very minimal example of an entity listener.

Please note that every listener is a service and can have parameters injected.

wouterj on 11 May 2015

There is a condition:

if (isset($attributes['entity']) && isset($attributes['event'])) {
     $this->attachToListener($container, $name, $id, $attributes);
}

So correct minimal example should be something similar to this:

app.event_listener.post:
    class: AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener
    arguments: []
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: prePersist }
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: preUpdate }

I'm using:

doctrine/annotations                 v1.2.7
doctrine/cache                       v1.6.0
doctrine/collections                 v1.3.0
doctrine/common                      v2.6.1
doctrine/data-fixtures               v1.1.1
doctrine/dbal                        v2.5.4
doctrine/doctrine-bundle             1.6.2 
doctrine/doctrine-cache-bundle       1.3.0 
doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle    2.3.0 
doctrine/inflector                   v1.1.0
doctrine/instantiator                1.0.5 
doctrine/lexer                       v1.0.1
doctrine/orm                         v2.5.4
symfony/symfony                      v2.8.2

piotrekkr on 10 Feb 2016

👍3

OK, so I figured it out. If I don't want to use full specification like:

- { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: prePersist }

I need to annotate my entity with something like this:

<?php
namespace AppBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="AppBundle\Repository\PostRepository")
 * @ORM\EntityListeners({"AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener"})
 */
class Post
{
//....
}

Then in services.yml I can just use short version:

app.event_listener.post:
    class: AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener
    arguments: []
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener }

My AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener:

<?php
namespace AppBundle\Entity\Listener;

use AppBundle\Entity\Post;
use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;

class PostListener
{

    public function preUpdate(Post $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event)
    {
        die('preUpdate');
    }

    public function prePersist(Post $user, LifecycleEventArgs $event)
    {
        die('prePersist');
    }
}

It seems that Symfony / doctrine is using its "magic" and searching for services with tag doctrine.orm.entity_manager and class defined in annotation.

piotrekkr on 11 Feb 2016

👍1

How did you do that?
@ORM\EntityListeners({"AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener"})
is not working for me. I'm using
"symfony/symfony": "2.8.*", "doctrine/orm": "2.5.*", "doctrine/doctrine-bundle": "~1.4",

miholeus on 19 Apr 2016

@miholeus Did you set listener service with correct tag? Do you use annotations or yaml? Do long version

app.event_listener.post:
    class: AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener
    arguments: []
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: prePersist }
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity: AppBundle\Entity\Post, event: preUpdate }

work?
Do you have prePersist() and preUpdate() methods inside listener?

Do you have doctrine/annotations installed?

piotrekkr on 19 Apr 2016

@piotrekkr Yes, "long version" is working fine. But the short version

app.event_listener.post:
    class: AppBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener
    arguments: []
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener }

doesn't work. I have both prePersist() and preUpdate methods. They are not invoked inspite of using
@ORM\EntityListeners annotation in entity.
Other annotations in entity work fine.

miholeus on 20 Apr 2016

@miholeus do you have XML or YAML mapping files ? If yes, the ORM simply never reads the annotations, as DoctrineBundle will configure your bundle to use XML or YAML. In such case, you need to edit your XML/YAML file, not the annotation (and I would advice to remove the annotation entirely if your bundle does not rely on them, to avoid WTFs about why changes in them are not taken into account)

stof on 20 Apr 2016

@stof yes, you are right. I used YAML mapping file. That was the reason. I've checked on new bundle and everything went smoothly. I've figured out that in my case I should append following lines to make it work:

    entityListeners:
        TaskBundle\Entity\Listener\PostListener: ~

Thanks for pointing the right direction)

miholeus on 21 Apr 2016

Though my listeners work fine I need to inject the MongoDB ODM Document Manager. Please see:
https://gist.github.com/webdevilopers/e65f795749c40601276f60a5a3517a85#file-customerlistener-php

Unfortunately adding the <tag name="doctrine.orm.entity_listener" /> causes an circular reference:

Is something wrong with my XML service definition? Or is this caused by the Document Manager and I need to inject the full Container for instance?