136 lines
5.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
136 lines
5.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
Doctrine Internals explained
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============================
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Object relational mapping is a complex topic and sufficiently understanding how Doctrine works internally helps you use its full power.
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How Doctrine keeps track of Objects
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-----------------------------------
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Doctrine uses the Identity Map pattern to track objects. Whenever you fetch an
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object from the database, Doctrine will keep a reference to this object inside
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its UnitOfWork. The array holding all the entity references is two-levels deep
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and has the keys "root entity name" and "id". Since Doctrine allows composite
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keys the id is a sorted, serialized version of all the key columns.
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This allows Doctrine room for optimizations. If you call the EntiyManager and
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ask for an entity with a specific ID twice, it will return the same instance:
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.. code-block:: php
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public function testIdentityMap()
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{
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$objectA = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);
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$objectB = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);
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$this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB)
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}
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Only one SELECT query will be fired against the database here. In the second
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``EntityManager#find()`` call Doctrine will check the identity map first and
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doesn't need to make that database roundtrip.
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Even if you get a proxy object first then fetch the object by the same id you
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will still end up with the same reference:
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.. code-block:: php
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public function testIdentityMapReference()
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{
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$objectA = $this->entityManager->getReference('EntityName', 1);
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// check for proxyinterface
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$this->assertInstanceOf('Doctrine\ORM\Proxy\Proxy', $objectA);
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$objectB = $this->entityManager->find('EntityName', 1);
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$this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB)
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}
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The identity map being indexed by primary keys only allows shortcuts when you
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ask for objects by primary key. Assume you have the following ``persons``
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table:
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::
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id | name
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-------------
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1 | Benjamin
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2 | Bud
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Take the following example where two
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consecutive calls are made against a repository to fetch an entity by a set of
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criteria:
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.. code-block:: php
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public function testIdentityMapRepositoryFindBy()
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{
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$repository = $this->entityManager->getRepository('Person');
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$objectA = $repository->findOneBy(array('name' => 'Benjamin'));
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$objectB = $repository->findOneBy(array('name' => 'Benjamin'));
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$this->assertSame($objectA, $objectB);
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}
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This query will still return the same references and `$objectA` and `$objectB`
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are indeed referencing the same object. However when checking your SQL logs you
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will realize that two queries have been executed against the database. Doctrine
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only knows objects by id, so a query for different criteria has to go to the
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database, even if it was executed just before.
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But instead of creating a second Person object Doctrine first gets the primary
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key from the row and check if it already has an object inside the UnitOfWork
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with that primary key. In our example it finds an object and decides to return
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this instead of creating a new one.
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The identity map has a second use-case. When you call ``EntityManager#flush``
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Doctrine will ask the identity map for all objects that are currently managed.
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This means you don't have to call ``EntityManager#persist`` over and over again
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to pass known objects to the EntityManager. This is a NO-OP for known entities,
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but leads to much code written that is confusing to other developers.
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The following code WILL update your database with the changes made to the
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``Person`` object, even if you did not call ``EntityManager#persist``:
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.. code-block:: php
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<?php
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$user = $entityManager->find("Person", 1);
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$user->setName("Guilherme");
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$entityManager->flush();
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How Doctrine Detects Changes
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----------------------------
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Doctrine is a data-mapper that tries to achieve persistence-ignorance (PI).
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This means you map php objects into a relational database that don't
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necessarily know about the database at all. A natural question would now be,
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"how does Doctrine even detect objects have changed?".
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For this Doctrine keeps a second map inside the UnitOfWork. Whenever you fetch
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an object from the database Doctrine will keep a copy of all the properties and
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associations inside the UnitOfWork. Because variables in the PHP language are
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subject to "copy-on-write" the memory usage of a PHP request that only reads
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objects from the database is the same as if Doctrine did not keep this variable
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copy. Only if you start changing variables PHP will create new variables internally
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that consume new memory.
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Now whenever you call ``EntityManager#flush`` Doctrine will iterate over the
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Identity Map and for each object compares the original property and association
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values with the values that are currently set on the object. If changes are
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detected then the object is qeued for an SQL UPDATE operation. Only the fields
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that actually changed are updated.
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This process has an obvious performance impact. The larger the size of the
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UnitOfWork is, the longer this computation takes. There are several ways to
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optimize the performance of the Flush Operation:
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- Mark entities as read only. These entities can only be inserted or removed,
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but are never updated. They are omitted in the changeset calculation.
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- Temporarily mark entities as read only. If you have a very large UnitOfWork
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but know that a large set of entities has not changed, just mark them as read
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only with ``$entityManager->getUnitOfWork()->markReadOnly($entity)``.
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- Flush only a single entity with ``$entityManager->flush($entity)``.
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- Use :doc:`Change Tracking Policies <change-tracking-policies>` to use more
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explicit strategies of notifying the UnitOfWork what objects/properties
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changed.
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