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How to Use Doctrine DBAL

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How to Use Doctrine DBAL

Note

This article is about the Doctrine DBAL. Typically, you'll work with the higher level Doctrine ORM layer, which simply uses the DBAL behind the scenes to actually communicate with the database. To read more about the Doctrine ORM, see "Databases and the Doctrine ORM".

The Doctrine Database Abstraction Layer (DBAL) is an abstraction layer that sits on top of PDO and offers an intuitive and flexible API for communicating with the most popular relational databases. In other words, the DBAL library makes it easy to execute queries and perform other database actions.

Tip

Read the official Doctrine DBAL Documentation to learn all the details and capabilities of Doctrine's DBAL library.

First, install the Doctrine bundle:

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$ composer require doctrine/doctrine-bundle

Then configure the DATABASE_URL environment variable in .env:

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# .env

# customize this line!
DATABASE_URL="mysql://db_user:[email protected]:3306/db_name"

Further things can be configured in config/packages/doctrine.yaml. For the full DBAL configuration options, or to learn how to configure multiple connections, see Doctrine DBAL Configuration.

You can then access the Doctrine DBAL connection by autowiring the Connection object:

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use Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\Connection;

class UserController extends Controller
{
    public function index(Connection $connection)
    {
        $users = $connection->fetchAll('SELECT * FROM users');

        // ...
    }
}

This will pass you the database_connection service.

Registering custom Mapping Types

You can register custom mapping types through Symfony's configuration. They will be added to all configured connections. For more information on custom mapping types, read Doctrine's Custom Mapping Types section of their documentation.

  • YAML
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    # config/packages/doctrine.yaml
doctrine:
    dbal:
        types:
            custom_first:  App\Type\CustomFirst
            custom_second: App\Type\CustomSecond
  • XML
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    <!-- config/packages/doctrine.xml -->
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:doctrine="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine/doctrine-1.0.xsd">

    <doctrine:config>
        <doctrine:dbal>
            <doctrine:type name="custom_first" class="App\Type\CustomFirst" />
            <doctrine:type name="custom_second" class="App\Type\CustomSecond" />
        </doctrine:dbal>
    </doctrine:config>
</container>
  • PHP
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    // config/packages/doctrine.php
use App\Type\CustomFirst;
use App\Type\CustomSecond;

$container->loadFromExtension('doctrine', array(
    'dbal' => array(
        'types' => array(
            'custom_first'  => CustomFirst::class,
            'custom_second' => CustomSecond::class,
        ),
    ),
));

Registering custom Mapping Types in the SchemaTool

The SchemaTool is used to inspect the database to compare the schema. To achieve this task, it needs to know which mapping type needs to be used for each database types. Registering new ones can be done through the configuration.

Now, map the ENUM type (not supported by DBAL by default) to the string mapping type:

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    # config/packages/doctrine.yaml
doctrine:
    dbal:
       mapping_types:
          enum: string
  • XML
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    <!-- config/packages/doctrine.xml -->
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:doctrine="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine/doctrine-1.0.xsd">

    <doctrine:config>
        <doctrine:dbal>
             <doctrine:mapping-type name="enum">string</doctrine:mapping-type>
        </doctrine:dbal>
    </doctrine:config>
</container>
  • PHP
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    // config/packages/doctrine.php
$container->loadFromExtension('doctrine', array(
    'dbal' => array(
       'mapping_types' => array(
          'enum'  => 'string',
       ),
    ),
));

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