removeElement() and clear() doesn't work in doctrine 2 with array collection property

Question

I\'m trying to get some simple CRUD done with doctrine 2 but when it\'s time to update a record with one property set as an array collection I don\'t seem to get removeElement()

Answer 1

I do something similar in a project with Events which have participants not unlike your User/Country relationship. I will just lay out the process and you can see if there's anything you are doing differently.

On the Participant entity

/**
 * @ManyToOne(targetEntity="Event", inversedBy="participants", fetch="LAZY")
 * @JoinColumn(name="event_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable="TRUE")
 * @var Event
 */
protected $event;

On the Event entity:

/**
 * @OneToMany(targetEntity="Participant", mappedBy="event")
 * @var \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection
 */
protected $participants;

Also in Event#__constructor I initialize like this:

$this->participants = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection();

Here is how I update an event:

public function update(Event $event, Event $changes)
{
    // Remove participants
    $removed = array();
    foreach($event->participants as $participant)
    {
        if(!$changes->isAttending($participant->person))
        {
            $removed[] = $participant;
        }
    }

    foreach($removed as $participant)
    {
        $event->removeParticipant($participant);
        $this->em->remove($participant);
    }

    // Add new participants
    foreach($changes->participants as $participant)
    {
        if(!$event->isAttending($participant->person))
        {
            $event->addParticipant($participant);
            $this->em->perist($participant);
        }
    }

    $event->copyFrom($changes);
    $event->setUpdated();
    $this->em->flush();
}

The methods on the Event entity are:

public function removeParticipant(Participant $participant)
{
    $this->participants->removeElement($participant);
    $participant->unsetEvent();
}

public function addParticipant(Participant $participant)
{
    $participant->setEvent($this);
    $this->participants[] = $participant;
}

The methods on the Participant entity are:

public function setEvent(Event $event)
{
    $this->event = $event;
}

public function unsetEvent()
{
    $this->event = null;
}

UPDATE: isAttending method

/**
 * Checks if the given person is a 
 * participant of the event
 * 
 * @param Person $person
 * @return boolean 
 */
public function isAttending(Person $person)
{
    foreach($this->participants as $participant)
    {
        if($participant->person->id == $person->id)
            return true;
    }

    return false;
}