Symfony app - how to add calculated fields to Propel objects?

Question

What is the best way of working with calculated fields of Propel objects?

Say I have an object \"Customer\" that has a corresponding table \"customers\" and each column

Answer 1

I am doing this in a project now by overriding hydrate() and Peer::addSelectColumns() for accessing postgis fields:

// in peer
public static function locationAsEWKTColumnIndex()
{
    return GeographyPeer::NUM_COLUMNS - GeographyPeer::NUM_LAZY_LOAD_COLUMNS;
}

public static function polygonAsEWKTColumnIndex()
{
    return GeographyPeer::NUM_COLUMNS - GeographyPeer::NUM_LAZY_LOAD_COLUMNS + 1;
}

public static function addSelectColumns(Criteria $criteria)
{
    parent::addSelectColumns($criteria);
    $criteria->addAsColumn("locationAsEWKT", "AsEWKT(" . GeographyPeer::LOCATION . ")");
    $criteria->addAsColumn("polygonAsEWKT", "AsEWKT(" . GeographyPeer::POLYGON . ")");
}
// in object
public function hydrate($row, $startcol = 0, $rehydrate = false)
{
    $r = parent::hydrate($row, $startcol, $rehydrate);
    if ($row[GeographyPeer::locationAsEWKTColumnIndex()])   // load GIS info from DB IFF the location field is populated. NOTE: These fields are either both NULL or both NOT NULL, so this IF is OK
    {
        $this->location_ = GeoPoint::PointFromEWKT($row[GeographyPeer::locationAsEWKTColumnIndex()]); // load gis data from extra select columns See GeographyPeer::addSelectColumns().
        $this->polygon_ = GeoMultiPolygon::MultiPolygonFromEWKT($row[GeographyPeer::polygonAsEWKTColumnIndex()]); // load gis data from extra select columns See GeographyPeer::addSelectColumns().
    }   
    return $r;
}   

There's something goofy with AddAsColumn() but I can't remember at the moment, but this does work. You can read more about the AddAsColumn() issues.