How to handle additional columns in join tables when using symfony?

Question

Suppose I have two entities in my Symfony2 package, User and Group . Associated with a many-to-many relationship.

  ┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ | USER | | USER_GROUP_REL | | GROUP | ├────────────────┤ ├────────────────┤ ├────────────────┤ | id# ├---------┤ user_id# | ┌----┤ id# | | username | | group_id# ├----┘ | groupname | | email | | created_date | | | └────────────────┘ └────────────────┘ └────────────────┘ 

What would be good practice or a good approach to add additional columns to the join table, for example, to the creation date, which represents the date that User joined the Group ?

I know that I could use QueryBuilder to write an INSERT .

But as far as I have not seen any example of INSERT QueryBuilder or native SQL, which leads me to believe that ORM / Doctrine try to avoid direct INSERT statements (for example, for security reasons). Plus, as I understood Symfony and Doctrine, I would be stunned if such a general requirement were not covered by the frame.

Answer 1

You want to set the relationship property. This is how it is done in the doctrine: doctrine 2 is many for many (Products - Categories)

I answered this question if used (like yours).

This is an additional question / answer that discusses the benefits and uses: Doctrine 2: the best way to manage many-to-many associations