[DDC-1776] Abstract class marked as @Entity in a single table inheritance is wrongly hydrated Created: 14/Apr/12  Updated: 01/May/13  Resolved: 01/May/13

Status: Resolved
Project: Doctrine 2 - ORM
Component/s: ORM
Affects Version/s: 2.2.2
Fix Version/s: None

Type: Bug Priority: Minor
Reporter: Benjamin Morel Assignee: Marco Pivetta
Resolution: Fixed Votes: 0
Labels: None
Environment:

Irrelevant


 Description   

I have the following entity hierarchy:

/**
 * @Entity
 * @InheritanceType("SINGLE_TABLE")
 * @DiscriminatorColumn(name="type", type="string")
 * @DiscriminatorMap({
     "prospectEdited" = "Application\Domain\Model\Event\ProspectEditedEvent"
   })
 */
abstract class Event {
	// ...
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
abstract class ProspectEvent extends Event {
    /**
     * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Application\Domain\Model\Prospect")
     */
    protected $prospect;
}

/**
 * @Entity
 */
class ProspectEditedEvent extends ProspectEvent {
	// ...
}

Although ProspectEvent is an abstract class, I need to mark it as @Entity, so that I can query for any type of ProspectEvent:

SELECT e FROM ProspectEvent e WHERE e.prospect = ?

So far, so good.
The problem happens when I query the root class:

SELECT e FROM Event e

The query works fine, but the returned ProspectEvent entities have a NULL $prospect property.
I noticed that in that case, the DocBlock for $prospect is totally ignored (a wrong @JoinColumn name for example, doesn't throw an exception).

The workaround to make it work, is to add a "fake" entry to the discriminator map for the abstract class:

@DiscriminatorMap({
  "prospectEvent"  = "Application\Domain\Model\Event\ProspectEvent"
  "prospectEdited" = "Application\Domain\Model\Event\ProspectEditedEvent"
})

Even though there is no such "prospectEvent" discriminator entry possible, as the class is abstract.
Final point, if I remove the @Entity DocBlock on ProspectEvent, $prospect is hydrated correctly, but then it is not possible to issue a DQL query on ProspectEvent anymore.

 Comments   
Comment by Benjamin Morel [ 29/Nov/12 ]

Any feedback?

Comment by Marco Pivetta [ 23/Jan/13 ]

Benjamin Morel I'd say this has to be fixed in validation. What if we enforce the fake discriminator map? The "workaround" you suggested is actually what you should write with correct mappings.

Comment by Marco Pivetta [ 09/Feb/13 ]

Yes, this has to be reported in validation somehow. The "workaround" is not actually a workaround, but what is expected to be written by the developer.

Comment by Benjamin Morel [ 10/Feb/13 ]

Ok, I found this weird because it's impossible to store a ProspectEvent in the database (as it's abstract), so adding a discriminator entry for it looks weird to me.
I would then suggest one of these two approaches:

  • Either remove the requirement to have a discriminator entry for the parent class if it's abstract (this would be my preference).
  • Or, document this behavior, and throw a proper exception if we try to persist / query such a hierarchy of classes.

But leaving the error unreported, and instantiating incomplete objects, is a real danger!

Comment by Benjamin Eberlei [ 01/May/13 ]

We fixed errors of this kind a while ago

Generated at Thu Jun 20 01:58:59 UTC 2013 using JIRA 5.2.7#850-sha1:b2af0c8dc8537b36121c6a579fabbdf79fc919e5.