Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 2.8, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 5.3 (the current stable version).

How to Create custom Repository Classes

2.8 version

Maintained

4.4 5.3 current 5.4 dev 6.0

Unmaintained

2.7 2.8 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.0 5.1 5.2

How to Create custom Repository Classes¶

Constructing and using complex queries inside controllers complicate the maintenance of your application. In order to isolate, reuse and test these queries, it’s a good practice to create a custom repository class for your entity. Methods containing your query logic can then be stored in this class.

To do this, add the repository class name to your entity’s mapping definition:

Annotations

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Product.php
namespace AppBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="AppBundle\Repository\ProductRepository")
 */
class Product
{
    //...
}

YAML

# src/AppBundle/Resources/config/doctrine/Product.orm.yml
AppBundle\Entity\Product:
    type: entity
    repositoryClass: AppBundle\Repository\ProductRepository
    # ...

XML

<!-- src/AppBundle/Resources/config/doctrine/Product.orm.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<doctrine-mapping xmlns="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping
        http://doctrine-project.org/schemas/orm/doctrine-mapping.xsd">

    <entity
        name="AppBundle\Entity\Product"
        repository-class="AppBundle\Repository\ProductRepository">

        <!-- ... -->
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>

Then, create an empty AppBundle\Repository\ProductRepository class extending from Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository.

Next, add a new method - findAllOrderedByName() - to the newly-generated ProductRepository class. This method will query for all the Product entities, ordered alphabetically by name:

// src/AppBundle/Repository/ProductRepository.php
namespace AppBundle\Repository;

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;

class ProductRepository extends EntityRepository
{
    public function findAllOrderedByName()
    {
        return $this->getEntityManager()
            ->createQuery(
                'SELECT p FROM AppBundle:Product p ORDER BY p.name ASC'
            )
            ->getResult();
    }
}

Tip

The entity manager can be accessed via $this->getEntityManager() from inside the repository.

You can use this new method just like the default finder methods of the repository:

use AppBundle\Entity\Post;
// ...

$entityManager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$products = $entityManager->getRepository(Product::class)
    ->findAllOrderedByName();

Note

When using a custom repository class, you still have access to the default finder methods such as find() and findAll().

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