PHP Mapping

Doctrine ORM also allows you to provide the ORM metadata in the form of plain PHP code using the ClassMetadata API. You can write the code in inside of a static function named loadMetadata($class) on the entity class itself.

Static Function

In addition to other drivers using configuration languages you can also programatically specify your mapping information inside of a static function defined on the entity class itself.

This is useful for cases where you want to keep your entity and mapping information together but don't want to use attributes. For this you just need to use the StaticPHPDriver:

<?phpuse Doctrine\Persistence\Mapping\Driver\StaticPHPDriver;$driver = new StaticPHPDriver('/path/to/entities');$em->getConfiguration()->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);

Now you just need to define a static function named loadMetadata($metadata) on your entity:

<?phpnamespace Entities;use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata;class User{    // ...    public static function loadMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)    {        $metadata->mapField(array(           'id' => true,           'fieldName' => 'id',           'type' => 'integer'        ));        $metadata->mapField(array(           'fieldName' => 'username',           'type' => 'string'        ));    }}

ClassMetadataBuilder

To ease the use of the ClassMetadata API (which is very raw) there is a ClassMetadataBuilder that you can use.

<?phpnamespace Entities;use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\ClassMetadata;use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Builder\ClassMetadataBuilder;class User{    // ...    public static function loadMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)    {        $builder = new ClassMetadataBuilder($metadata);        $builder->createField('id', 'integer')->isPrimaryKey()->generatedValue()->build();        $builder->addField('username', 'string');    }}

The API of the ClassMetadataBuilder has the following methods with a fluent interface:

addField($name, $type, array $mapping)
setMappedSuperclass()
setReadOnly()
setCustomRepositoryClass($className)
setTable($name)
addIndex(array $columns, $indexName)
addUniqueConstraint(array $columns, $constraintName)
setJoinedTableInheritance()
setSingleTableInheritance()
setDiscriminatorColumn($name, $type = 'string', $length = 255, $columnDefinition = null, $enumType = null, $options = [])
addDiscriminatorMapClass($name, $class)
setChangeTrackingPolicyDeferredExplicit()
addLifecycleEvent($methodName, $event)
addManyToOne($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addInverseOneToOne($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)
addOwningOneToOne($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addOwningManyToMany($name, $targetEntity, $inversedBy = null)
addInverseManyToMany($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)
addOneToMany($name, $targetEntity, $mappedBy)

It also has several methods that create builders (which are necessary for advanced mappings):

createField($name, $type) returns a FieldBuilder instance
createManyToOne($name, $targetEntity) returns an AssociationBuilder instance
createOneToOne($name, $targetEntity) returns an AssociationBuilder instance
createManyToMany($name, $targetEntity) returns an ManyToManyAssociationBuilder instance
createOneToMany($name, $targetEntity) returns an OneToManyAssociationBuilder instance

ClassMetadata API

The ClassMetadata class is the data object for storing the mapping metadata for a single entity. It contains all the getters and setters you need populate and retrieve information for an entity.