How to Work with Lifecycle Callbacks

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.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Product.php
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @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):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

// src/AppBundle/Entity/Product.php
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

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

1
2
3
4
5
6

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

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

<!-- 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
        https://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>

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.