如何设置symfony实体类中某些字段的值

Question

I have the entity class in symfony like this

/**
 * @var datetime $createDate
 * @ORM\Column(name="create_date", type="datetime", nullable=false)
 *
 */
private $createDate;

/**
 * @return datetime
 */
public function getCreateDate(){
    return $this->createDate;
}

public function setCreateDate(\DateTime $createDate){
    $this->createDate=new \DateTime('today');
    return $this;
}

basically i want to set the date to today while saving.

I am using JSON which gets are serilaized object and then i am deserializing it.

but this date object is not in that serilaizer and i want to set it when i persist the entity

This is simple case but i want to do some calculation on date and then save it.

Answer 1

There are different approaches. The simplest one is to set the createDate in the constructor:

public function __construct()
{
  $this->createDate = new \DateTime();
}

The second one is - like Alexander already described - using a lifecycle callback method:

/**
 * @ORM\Entity()
 * @ORM\HasLifecycleCallbacks()
 */
class yourEntityClass
{
  // ...

  /**
   * @ORM\PrePersist
   */
  public function prePersist()
  {
    $this->createDate = new \DateTime();
  }
}

The third one is using the Doctrine Extensions bundle, which comes with an annotation for that:

/**
 * @var datetime $createDate
 * @ORM\Column(name="create_date", type="datetime", nullable=false)
 * @Gedmo\Timestampable(on="create")
 */
private $createDate;

This makes especially sense, if you also want to use additional behaviours that come with this bundle, for example the sluggable behaviour or the translatable behaviour.