Symfony 2.0 getting service inside entity

Question

Im seraching over and cannot find answer. I have database role model in my application. User can have a role but this role must be stored into database.

But then user needs to have default role added from database. So i created a service:

<?php

namespace Alef\UserBundle\Service;

use Alef\UserBundle\Entity\Role;

/**
 * Description of RoleService
 *
 * @author oracle
 */
class RoleService {

    const ENTITY_NAME = 'AlefUserBundle:Role';

    private $em;

    public function __construct(EntityManager $em)
    {
        $this->em = $em;
    }

    public function findAll()
    {
        return $this->em->getRepository(self::ENTITY_NAME)->findAll();
    }

    public function create(User $user)
    {
        // possibly validation here

        $this->em->persist($user);
        $this->em->flush($user);
    }

    public function addRole($name, $role) {
        if (($newrole = findRoleByRole($role)) != null)
            return $newrole;
        if (($newrole = findRoleByName($name)) != null)
            return $newrole;

        //there is no existing role
        $newrole = new Role();
        $newrole->setName($name);
        $newrole->setRole($role);

        $em->persist($newrole);
        $em->flush();

        return $newrole;
    }

    public function getRoleByName($name) {
        return $this->em->getRepository(self::ENTITY_NAME)->findBy(array('name' => $name));
    }

    public function getRoleByRole($role) {
        return $this->em->getRepository(self::ENTITY_NAME)->findBy(array('role' => $role));
    }

}

my services.yml is:

alef.role_service:
    class: Alef\UserBundle\Service\RoleService
    arguments: [%doctrine.orm.entity_manager%]

And now I want to use it in two places: UserController and User entity. How can i get them inside entity? As for controller i think i just need to:

$this->get('alef.role_service');

But how to get service inside entity?

Answer 1

You don't. This is a very common question. Entities should only know about other entities and not about the entity manager or other high level services. It can be a bit of a challenge to make the transition to this way of developing but it's usually worth it.

What you want to do is to load the role when you load the user. Typically you will end up with a UserProvider which does this sort of thing. Have you read through the sections on security? That should be your starting point:

http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/security.html