Symfony2 - Setting $categoryTitle without having to manually pass it in the controller

Question

I am using a simple search function, however the problem is that I am hardcoding the category title value in the controller by a findByTitle then passing that into the search function.

Category has a OneToMany/ManyToOne relationship with Post entity.

Have tried the following but got the following error: Error: Call to a member function getTitle() on a non-object

$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();

$query = $this->get('search');

$category = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findAll();

$categoryTitle = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findByTitle($category->getTitle());

$posts = $query->search($categoryTitle);

How can I dynamically set this value so I don't have to manually pass this in?

Controller

/**
 * Search action
 *
 * @return array
 *
 * @Route("/search", name="job1_search")
 * @Template("AcmeDemoBundle:Job1:search.html.twig")
 */
public function searchAction()
{
    // Search code: calling from the service Search
    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();

    $query = $this->get('search');

    $categoryTitle = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
        ->findByTitle('job1');

    $posts = $query->search($categoryTitle);

    return array(
        'query' => $query,
        'posts' => $posts['results'],
    );
}

Search service

public function search($categoryTitle)
{
    $results = null;
    $query = $this->request->query->get('q');

    if (!empty($query)) {
        $em = $this->doctrine->getManager();

        $results = $em->createQueryBuilder()
            ->from('AcmeDemoBundle:Post', 'post')
            ->select('post')
            ->where('post.category = :category')
            ->setParameter('category', $categoryTitle)
            ->andWhere('post.title LIKE :search')
            ->addOrderBy('post.created', 'DESC')
            ->setParameter('search', "%${query}%")
            ->getQuery()
            ->getResult();
    }

    return array(
        'query'   => $query,
        'results' => $results,
    );
}

Answer 1

Ok, let's start from the beginning:

$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();

$query = $this->get('search');

// This will give an ArrayCollection of all AcmeDemoBundle:Category that you have
$category = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findAll();

// In here $category is an array, so you cannot get it's title
// Also if you would have an actual entity set as $category - the $categorytitle would
// still be a AcmeDemoBundle:Category entity object, not a title string
$categoryTitle = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findByTitle($category->getTitle());

$posts = $query->search($categoryTitle);

You have a search query string, so I would go with that:

// This will contain the entity object
$category = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')->findByTitle($query);

To get the title out of that:

$categoryTitle = $category->getTitle();

Answer 2

The findAll() method sends back an array no matter if you have one or multiple entities persisted

$category = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findAll();

It means that on the following lines

$categoryTitle = $em->getRepository('AcmeDemoBundle:Category')
    ->findByTitle($category->getTitle())

You'd have to change $category->getTitle() which is throwing an error because you are calling the method on the array itself not the entities it contains.

It's hard to give more details without knowing exactly what you are trying to do (use one category or multiple, how is it chosen, ect...)