How to Work with multiple Entity Managers and Connections
Edit this pageWarning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.0, which is no longer maintained.
Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.0 (the current stable version).
How to Work with multiple Entity Managers and Connections
You can use multiple Doctrine entity managers or connections in a Symfony application. This is necessary if you are using different databases or even vendors with entirely different sets of entities. In other words, one entity manager that connects to one database will handle some entities while another entity manager that connects to another database might handle the rest.
Note
Using multiple entity managers is pretty easy, but more advanced and not usually required. Be sure you actually need multiple entity managers before adding in this layer of complexity.
Caution
Entities cannot define associations across different entity managers. If you need that, there are several alternatives that require some custom setup.
The following configuration code shows how you can configure two entity managers:
- YAML
- XML
- PHP
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 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
# config/packages/doctrine.yaml
doctrine:
dbal:
default_connection: default
connections:
default:
# configure these for your database server
url: '%env(DATABASE_URL)%'
driver: 'pdo_mysql'
server_version: '5.7'
charset: utf8mb4
customer:
# configure these for your database server
url: '%env(DATABASE_CUSTOMER_URL)%'
driver: 'pdo_mysql'
server_version: '5.7'
charset: utf8mb4
orm:
default_entity_manager: default
entity_managers:
default:
connection: default
mappings:
Main:
is_bundle: false
type: annotation
dir: '%kernel.project_dir%/src/Entity/Main'
prefix: 'App\Entity\Main'
alias: Main
customer:
connection: customer
mappings:
Customer:
is_bundle: false
type: annotation
dir: '%kernel.project_dir%/src/Entity/Customer'
prefix: 'App\Entity\Customer'
alias: CustomerIn this case, you've defined two entity managers and called them default
and customer. The default entity manager manages entities in the
src/Entity/Main directory, while the customer entity manager manages
entities in src/Entity/Customer. You've also defined two connections, one
for each entity manager.
Note
When working with multiple connections and entity managers, you should be
explicit about which configuration you want. If you do omit the name of
the connection or entity manager, the default (i.e. default) is used.
When working with multiple connections to create your databases:
1 2 3 4 5
# Play only with "default" connection
$ php bin/console doctrine:database:create
# Play only with "customer" connection
$ php bin/console doctrine:database:create --connection=customerWhen working with multiple entity managers to generate migrations:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# Play only with "default" mappings
$ php bin/console doctrine:migrations:diff
$ php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate
# Play only with "customer" mappings
$ php bin/console doctrine:migrations:diff --em=customer
$ php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate --em=customerIf you do omit the entity manager's name when asking for it,
the default entity manager (i.e. default) is returned:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
// ...
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
class UserController extends Controller
{
public function index(EntityManagerInterface $entityManager)
{
// These methods also return the default entity manager, but it's preferred
// to get it by injecting EntityManagerInterface in the action method
$entityManager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$entityManager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager('default');
$entityManager = $this->get('doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager');
// Both of these return the "customer" entity manager
$customerEntityManager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager('customer');
$customerEntityManager = $this->get('doctrine.orm.customer_entity_manager');
}
}You can now use Doctrine just as you did before - using the default entity
manager to persist and fetch entities that it manages and the customer
entity manager to persist and fetch its entities.
The same applies to repository calls:
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 26 27
use AcmeStoreBundle\Entity\Customer;
use AcmeStoreBundle\Entity\Product;
// ...
class UserController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
// Retrieves a repository managed by the "default" em
$products = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository(Product::class)
->findAll()
;
// Explicit way to deal with the "default" em
$products = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository(Product::class, 'default')
->findAll()
;
// Retrieves a repository managed by the "customer" em
$customers = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository(Customer::class, 'customer')
->findAll()
;
}
}
