Description
Feature Request
| Q | A |
|---|---|
| New Feature | yes |
| RFC | yes |
| BC Break | yes/no |
Summary
When relationships are defined the referencedColumnName is automatically derived from the target entity, unless JoinColumn is specified. When JoinColumn is added for any other purpose the referencedColumnName is hardcoded to id. I think it should be fetched from the target entity as if no JoinColumn was defined.
Reasoning
When defining relationships, e.g.:
#[ORM\OneToOne(inversedBy: 'media')]
#[ORM\JoinColumn(name: 'ZATTACHMENT1')]
public Attachment $attachment;A lot of things are assumed:
- type of the relationship from PHP type
- nullability
- target entity (based on type)
- column name (based on property name transformed by naming strategy via
joinColumnName()) - reference column name on the other side (based on target entity PK, optionally derived from naming strategy
referenceColumnName())
Normally entities also get their primary key column name from the naming strategy, making the JoinColumn optional. However, as soon as it gets added for a different purpose (like above: to change column name) it creates a strange side effect of referencedColumnName being overridden by a hardcoded value of id:
orm/lib/Doctrine/ORM/Mapping/JoinColumn.php
Lines 43 to 45 in 84df37d
Possible improvements
I'm sure there was a reason why this decision was made, but I cannot find it.
The ideal solution, in my opinion, will be defaulting the referencedColumnName to the target entity primary key, in the same was as when JoinColumn isn't present on the property. However, this may be seen as a BC break. Changing it now to suddenly read from the naming strategy/target entity may not be the best course of action as applications may rely on this behavior (even if a small number).
However, it's also extremely unintuitive (especially when using PHPDoc-based annotations) to see the referenced column change when the user think adding JoinColumn is added to only change the column name. The alternative could be explicitly setting the parameter to null to indicate "figure this out yourself". Currently it's impossible to achieve that - one has to manually specify referencedColumnName every time JoinColumn is used.
WDYT? Can this be improved? Currently it leads to a lot of boilerplate code and semi-hardcoded PK name outside of a custom naming strategy.