打印Doctrine_Collection对象？

Question

I'm currently using Symfony 1.2 and Doctrine for my project and I have a question concerning the Doctrine_collection objects.

Say I want to retrieve infos about the element with Id 1 in my table test

$test = Doctrine::getTable('Test')->find(1);

Fine it's working, I can print the different attributes of this object, no problem here

echo $test->name;

I can also print the whole object in an array

print_r($test->toArray());

But if I try to print directly the doctrine_collection object

print_r($test)

I get a huge array, with a lot of strange values like configuration parameters and stuff. Is it a normal behavior ?

Answer 1

Avoid printing Doctrine_Collection or Doctrine_Record, there are many properties for internal use that do not matter to you, and you can also see relations, which can result in recursion if the related record has a reverse relation. Using toArray() on the collection or record is the best practice.