Injecting SecurityContext into a Listener prePersist or preUpdate in Symfony2 to get User in a createdBy or updatedBy Causes Circular Reference Error

Question

I setup a listener class where i\'ll set the ownerid column on any doctrine prePersist. My services.yml file looks like this ...

services:
my.listener:
             


        

Answer 1

I use the doctrine config files to set preUpdate or prePersist methods:

Project\MainBundle\Entity\YourEntity:
    type: entity
    table: yourentities
    repositoryClass: Project\MainBundle\Repository\YourEntitytRepository
    fields:
        id:
            type: integer
            id: true
            generator:
                strategy: AUTO

    lifecycleCallbacks:
        prePersist: [methodNameHere]
        preUpdate: [anotherMethodHere]

And the methods are declared in the entity, this way you don't need a listener and if you need a more general method you can make a BaseEntity to keep that method and extend the other entites from that. Hope it helps!

Answer 2

There's a great answer already in this thread but everything changes. Now there're entity listeners classes in Doctrine: http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/events.html#entity-listeners-class

So you can add an annotation to your entity like:

/**
 * @ORM\EntityListeners({"App\Entity\Listener\PhotoListener"})
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="App\Repository\PhotoRepository")
 */
class Photo 
{
    // Entity code here...
}

And create a class like this:

class PhotoListener
{        
    private $container;

    function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    /** @ORM\PreRemove() */
    public function preRemoveHandler(Photo $photo, LifecycleEventArgs $event): void
    {
         // Some code here...
    }
}

Also you should define this listener in services.yml like that:

photo_listener:
  class: App\Entity\Listener\PhotoListener
  public: false
  autowire: true
  tags:
    - {name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener}

Answer 3

I had similar problems and the only workaround was to pass the whole container in the constructor (arguments: ['@service_container']).

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;

class MyListener
{
    protected $container;

    public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    // ...

    public function prePersist(LifeCycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $securityContext = $this->container->get('security.context');

        // ...
    }
}

Answer 4

As of Symfony 2.6 this issue should be fixed. A pull request has just been accepted into the master. Your problem is described in here. https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/11690

As of Symfony 2.6, you can inject the security.token_storage into your listener. This service will contain the token as used by the SecurityContext in <=2.5. In 3.0 this service will replace the SecurityContext::getToken() altogether. You can see a basic change list here: http://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-2-6-security-component-improvements#deprecated-the-security-context-service

Example usage in 2.6:

Your configuration:

services:
    my.entityListener:
        class: App\SharedBundle\Listener\EntityListener
        arguments:
            - "@security.token_storage"
        tags:
            - { name: doctrine.event_listener, event: prePersist }

Your Listener

namespace App\SharedBundle\Listener;

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Authentication\Token\Storage\TokenStorageInterface;

class EntityListener
{
    private $token_storage;

    public function __construct(TokenStorageInterface $token_storage)
    {
        $this->token_storage = $token_storage;
    }

    public function prePersist(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $entity = $args->getEntity();
        $entity->setCreatedBy($this->token_storage->getToken()->getUsername());
    }
}

For a nice created_by example, you can use https://github.com/hostnet/entity-blamable-component/blob/master/src/Listener/BlamableListener.php for inspiration. It uses the hostnet/entity-tracker-component which provides a special event that is fired when an entity is changed during your request. There's also a bundle to configure this in Symfony2

• https://github.com/hostnet/entity-tracker-component
• https://github.com/hostnet/entity-tracker-bundle