How to Work with Lifecycle Callbacks

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Sometimes, you need to perform an action right before or after an entity is inserted, updated, or deleted. These types of actions are known as "lifecycle" callbacks, as they're callback methods that you need to execute during different stages of the lifecycle of an entity (e.g. the entity is inserted, updated, deleted, etc).

If you're using annotations for your metadata, start by enabling the lifecycle callbacks. This is not necessary if you're using YAML or XML for your mapping.

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

Now, you can tell Doctrine to execute a method on any of the available lifecycle events. For example, suppose you want to set a createdAt date column to the current date, only when the entity is first persisted (i.e. inserted):

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        // src/AppBundle/Entity/Product.php

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

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        # src/AppBundle/Resources/config/doctrine/Product.orm.yml
AppBundle\Entity\Product:
    type: entity
    # ...
    lifecycleCallbacks:
        prePersist: [setCreatedAtValue]
    

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        <!-- 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">
        <!-- ... -->
        <lifecycle-callbacks>
            <lifecycle-callback type="prePersist" method="setCreatedAtValue" />
        </lifecycle-callbacks>
    </entity>
</doctrine-mapping>
    

Note

The above example assumes that you've created and mapped a createdAt property (not shown here).

Now, right before the entity is first persisted, Doctrine will automatically call this method and the createdAt field will be set to the current date.

There are several other lifecycle events that you can hook into. For more information on other lifecycle events and lifecycle callbacks in general, see Doctrine's Lifecycle Events documentation.

Notice that the setCreatedAtValue() method receives no arguments. This is always the case for lifecycle callbacks and is intentional: lifecycle callbacks should be simple methods that are concerned with internally transforming data in the entity (e.g. setting a created/updated field, generating a slug value).

If you need to do some heavier lifting - like performing logging or sending an email - you should register an external class as an event listener or subscriber and give it access to whatever resources you need. For more information, see Doctrine Event Listeners and Subscribers.

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

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