How can I use SQL's YEAR(), MONTH() and DAY() in Doctrine2?

Question

I want to perform a query which would look like this in native SQL:

SELECT
    AVG(t.column) AS average_value
FROM
    table t
WHERE
    YEAR(t.timestamp) = 2013 AND
    MONTH(t.timestamp) = 09 AND
    DAY(t.timestamp) = 16 AND
    t.somethingelse LIKE 'somethingelse'
GROUP BY
    t.somethingelse;

If I am trying to implement this in Doctrine's query builder like this:

$qb = $this->getDoctrine()->createQueryBuilder();
$qb->select('e.column AS average_value')
   ->from('MyBundle:MyEntity', 'e')
   ->where('YEAR(e.timestamp) = 2013')
   ->andWhere('MONTH(e.timestamp) = 09')
   ->andWhere('DAY(e.timestamp) = 16')
   ->andWhere('u.somethingelse LIKE somethingelse')
   ->groupBy('somethingelse');

I get the error exception

[Syntax Error] line 0, col 63: Error: Expected known function, got 'YEAR'

How can I implement my query with Doctrines query builder?

Notes:

• I know about Doctrine's Native SQL. I've tried this, but it leads to the problem that my productive and my development database tables have different names. I want to work database agnostic, so this is no option.
• Although I want to work db agnostic: FYI, I am using MySQL.
• There is way to extend Doctrine to "learn" the YEAR() etc. statements, e.g. as seen here. But I am looking for a way to avoid including third party plugins.

Answer 1

You can add Doctrine extension so you can use the MySql YEAR and MONTH statement by adding this configuration if you're on Symfony:

doctrine:
    orm:
        dql:
            string_functions:
                MONTH: DoctrineExtensions\Query\Mysql\Month
                YEAR: DoctrineExtensions\Query\Mysql\Year

now you can use the MONTH and YEAR statements in your DQL or querybuilder.

Note: The extension supports MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite.