Advanced Configuration

Proxy Directory (REQUIRED)

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<?php
$config->setProxyDir($dir);
$config->getProxyDir();
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Gets or sets the directory where Doctrine generates any proxy classes. For a detailed explanation on proxy classes and how they are used in Doctrine, refer to the Proxy Objects section further down.

Proxy Namespace (REQUIRED)

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<?php
$config->setProxyNamespace($namespace);
$config->getProxyNamespace();
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Gets or sets the namespace to use for generated proxy classes. For a detailed explanation on proxy classes and how they are used in Doctrine, refer to the Proxy Objects section further down.

Metadata Driver (REQUIRED)

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$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driver);
$config->getMetadataDriverImpl();
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Gets or sets the metadata driver implementation that is used by Doctrine to acquire the object-relational metadata for your classes.

There are currently 3 available implementations:

• Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\AttributeDriver
• Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\XmlDriver
• Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\DriverChain

Throughout the most part of this manual the AttributeDriver is used in the examples. For information on the usage of the XmlDriver please refer to the dedicated chapter XML Mapping.

The attribute driver can be injected in the Doctrine\ORM\Configuration:

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<?php
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Driver\AttributeDriver;

$driverImpl = new AttributeDriver(['/path/to/lib/MyProject/Entities'], true);
$config->setMetadataDriverImpl($driverImpl);
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The path information to the entities is required for the attribute driver, because otherwise mass-operations on all entities through the console could not work correctly. All of metadata drivers accept either a single directory as a string or an array of directories. With this feature a single driver can support multiple directories of Entities.

Metadata Cache (RECOMMENDED)

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$config->setMetadataCache($cache);
$config->getMetadataCache();
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Gets or sets the cache adapter to use for caching metadata information, that is, all the information you supply via attributes, xml, so that they do not need to be parsed and loaded from scratch on every single request which is a waste of resources. The cache implementation must implement the PSR-6 Psr\Cache\CacheItemPoolInterface interface.

Usage of a metadata cache is highly recommended.

For development you should use an array cache like Symfony\Component\Cache\Adapter\ArrayAdapter which only caches data on a per-request basis.

Query Cache (RECOMMENDED)

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$config->setQueryCache($cache);
$config->getQueryCache();
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Gets or sets the cache implementation to use for caching DQL queries, that is, the result of a DQL parsing process that includes the final SQL as well as meta information about how to process the SQL result set of a query. Note that the query cache does not affect query results. You do not get stale data. This is a pure optimization cache without any negative side-effects (except some minimal memory usage in your cache).

Usage of a query cache is highly recommended.

For development you should use an array cache like Symfony\Component\Cache\Adapter\ArrayAdapter which only caches data on a per-request basis.

SQL Logger (Optional)

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$config->setSQLLogger($logger);
$config->getSQLLogger();
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Gets or sets the logger to use for logging all SQL statements executed by Doctrine. The logger class must implement the deprecated Doctrine\DBAL\Logging\SQLLogger interface.

Auto-generating Proxy Classes (OPTIONAL)

Proxy classes can either be generated manually through the Doctrine Console or automatically at runtime by Doctrine. The configuration option that controls this behavior is:

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<?php
$config->setAutoGenerateProxyClasses($mode);
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Possible values for $mode are:

• Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\ProxyFactory::AUTOGENERATE_NEVER

Never autogenerate a proxy. You will need to generate the proxies manually, for this use the Doctrine Console like so:

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$ ./doctrine orm:generate-proxies

When you do this in a development environment, be aware that you may get class/file not found errors if certain proxies are not yet generated. You may also get failing lazy-loads if new methods were added to the entity class that are not yet in the proxy class. In such a case, simply use the Doctrine Console to (re)generate the proxy classes.

• Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\ProxyFactory::AUTOGENERATE_ALWAYS

Always generates a new proxy in every request and writes it to disk.

• Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\ProxyFactory::AUTOGENERATE_FILE_NOT_EXISTS

Generate the proxy class when the proxy file does not exist. This strategy causes a file exists call whenever any proxy is used the first time in a request.

• Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\ProxyFactory::AUTOGENERATE_EVAL

Generate the proxy classes and evaluate them on the fly via eval(), avoiding writing the proxies to disk. This strategy is only sane for development.

In a production environment, it is highly recommended to use AUTOGENERATE_NEVER to allow for optimal performances. The other options are interesting in development environment.

setAutoGenerateProxyClasses can accept a boolean value. This is still possible, FALSE being equivalent to AUTOGENERATE_NEVER and TRUE to AUTOGENERATE_ALWAYS.

Reference Proxies

The method EntityManager#getReference($entityName, $identifier) lets you obtain a reference to an entity for which the identifier is known, without necessarily loading that entity from the database. This is useful, for example, as a performance enhancement, when you want to establish an association to an entity for which you have the identifier.

Consider the following example:

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// $em instanceof EntityManager, $cart instanceof MyProject\Model\Cart
// $itemId comes from somewhere, probably a request parameter
$item = $em->getReference('MyProject\Model\Item', $itemId);
$cart->addItem($item);
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Whether the object being returned from EntityManager#getReference() is a proxy or a direct instance of the entity class may depend on different factors, including whether the entity has already been loaded into memory or entity inheritance being used. But your code does not need to care and in fact it should not care. Proxy objects should be transparent to your code.

When using the EntityManager#getReference() method, you need to be aware of a few peculiarities.

At the best case, the ORM can avoid querying the database at all. But, that also means that this method will not throw an exception when an invalid value for the $identifier parameter is passed. $identifier values are not checked and there is no guarantee that the requested entity instance even exists – the method will still return a proxy object.

Its only when the proxy has to be fully initialized or associations cannot be written to the database that invalid $identifier values may lead to exceptions.

The EntityManager#getReference() is mostly useful when you only need a reference to some entity to make an association, like in the example above. In that case, it can save you from loading data from the database that you don't need. But remember – as soon as you read any property values besides those making up the ID, a database request will be made to initialize all fields.

Association proxies

The second most important situation where Doctrine uses proxy objects is when querying for objects. Whenever you query for an object that has a single-valued association to another object that is configured LAZY, without joining that association in the same query, Doctrine puts proxy objects in place where normally the associated object would be. Just like other proxies it will transparently initialize itself on first access.

Generating Proxy classes

In a production environment, it is highly recommended to use AUTOGENERATE_NEVER to allow for optimal performances. However you will be required to generate the proxies manually using the Doctrine Console:

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$ ./doctrine orm:generate-proxies

The other options are interesting in development environment:

• AUTOGENERATE_ALWAYS will require you to create and configure a proxy directory. Proxies will be generated and written to file on each request, so any modification to your code will be acknowledged.
• AUTOGENERATE_FILE_NOT_EXISTS will not overwrite an existing proxy file. If your code changes, you will need to regenerate the proxies manually.
• AUTOGENERATE_EVAL will regenerate each proxy on each request, but without writing them to disk.