UniqueEntity

Validates that a particular field (or fields) in a Doctrine entity is (are) unique. This is commonly used, for example, to prevent a new user to register using an email address that already exists in the system.

Applies to	class
Options	fields message em
Class	UniqueEntity
Validator	UniqueEntityValidator

Basic Usage

Suppose you have an AcmeUserBundle bundle with a User entity that has an email field. You can use the UniqueEntity constraint to guarantee that the email field remains unique between all of the constraints in your user table:

YAML
Annotations
XML
PHP

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
        # src/Acme/UserBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml
Acme\UserBundle\Entity\Author:
    constraints:
        - Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntity: email
    properties:
        email:
            - Email: ~
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
        // Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity;

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

// DON'T forget this use statement!!!
use Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntity;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @UniqueEntity("email")
 */
class Author
{
    /**
     * @var string $email
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="email", type="string", length=255, unique=true)
     * @Assert\Email()
     */
    protected $email;
    
    // ...
}
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
        <class name="Acme\UserBundle\Entity\Author">
    <constraint name="Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntity">
        <option name="fields">email</option>
        <option name="message">This email already exists.</option>
    </constraint>
    <property name="email">
        <constraint name="Email" />
    </property>
</class>
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
        // Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity;

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

// DON'T forget this use statement!!!
use Symfony\Bridge\Doctrine\Validator\Constraints\UniqueEntity;

class Author
{
    public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata)
    {
        $metadata->addConstraint(new UniqueEntity(array(
            'fields'  => 'email',
            'message' => 'This email already exists.',
        )));

        $metadata->addPropertyConstraint(new Assert\Email());
    }
}
    

Options

fields

type: array | string [default option]

This required option is the field (or list of fields) on which this entity should be unique. For example, if you specified both the email and name field in a single UniqueEntity constraint, then it would enforce that the combination value where unique (e.g. two users could have the same email, as long as they don't have the same name also).

If you need to require two fields to be individually unique (e.g. a unique email and a unique username), you use two UniqueEntity entries, each with a single field.

message

type: string default: This value is already used.

The message that's displayed when this constraint fails.

em

type: string

The name of the entity manager to use for making the query to determine the uniqueness. If it's left blank, the default entity manager will be used.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.