Symfony2: Using two form fields for one entity property?

Question

This is an existing schema I'm working with and I'm trying to not make any changes for the time being. I have an entity property that represents a university semester, like "fall12", "spring11", etc.

When adding or editing this entity with a form, I want to split that property into two form fields: "Season" (fall or spring") and "Year" (2011, 2012, etc):

...
->add('formSemesterSeason', 'choice', array(
    'label' => 'Season',
    'mapped' => false,
    'choices' => array('fall' => 'Fall', 'spring' => 'Spring'),
))
->add('formSemesterYear', 'choice', array(
    'label' => 'Year',
    'mapped' => false,
    'choices' => $this->courseManager->getYearChoices(),
))
...

When submitting the form, the values need to be combined and saved to the "semester" property on the entity as a string
When viewing the edit form, the existing "semester" value needs to be split between the two.

I don't think data transformers help here, since they apply to transforming just one form item.

Right now I'm using a form event POST_SET_DATA to fill out the two form fields when editing an existing entity:

$builder->addEventListener(FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA, function (FormEvent $event) use ($course_manager) {
    $course = $event->getData();
    $form = $event->getForm();

    $semester = $course->getSemester();
    $parsed_semester = $course_manager->parseSemesterMachineName($semester);

    $form->get('formSemesterSeason')->setData($parsed_semester->season);
    $form->get('formSemesterYear')->setData($parsed_semester->yearFull);
});

This works well, but how do I then combine the values back after the form has been submitted? I can do it easily in the controller, but I think I should be able to use form events, and have the data manipulation take place before form validation.

qooplmao · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-24 19:24:36Z

1

You can combine them back in a POST_SUBMIT listener.

The best way (reuseable) would be to create your own custom form type with a data transformer to split/combine the fields internally.

There are "recipes" in the cookbook but the best way that I found to create it was to rip apart the DateTime field type and associated transformers (DataTransformerChain, DateTimeToArrayTransformer & ArrayToPartsTransformer) for parts and build my own from that.

answered Jul 24, 2014 at 19:24

qooplmao

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1 Comment

Brian Over a year ago

Thanks for pointing out the DateTime field type. This, and the Time field type are perfect examples of what I'm looking to do.

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