Form collection preset data not based on entity

Question

I have a difficult problem to solve. I need to implement a functionality to create custom forms (that is declare what fields it should have) and then be able to save and retrieve the data. The form generation mechanism is based on EAV model - form template entity has form fields entity (which are form templates attributes). Each form field has type, name, label etc. Then I dynamically display the form( foreach $fields as $field (...) $formBuilder->add($field->getType() etc.). After all that the data is saved in another entity called FormInstanceData which consist of field name:field value pairs. The hard part is that I have to be able to create form templates with form field groups which behave like collections (new ones can be added with JS). The form (generated with the template) displays correctly, but I have problem with retrieving the data (as the final data is not an entity for obvious reasons). Simple fields can be successfully filled out with retrieved data (by passing data option with the field name as key), but I can't get the nested collection fields to work - even after passing the data, the collections simply don't display.

The part of the code responsible for that looks like this:

elseif ($fieldType === 'collection'){
              $subfields = $field->getSubfields();
              $formBuilder->add('subfields', 'collection', array(
                'type' => new FormCollectionType($subfields),
                'allow_add' => true,
                'mapped' => false,
                'allow_delete' => true,
                'by_reference' => false,
                'options' => array('required' => false, 'data' => array(
                    array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum'),
                    array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum')

The FormCollectionType is also generated dynamically with the $subfields parameter. In this case, each item in collection has two fields - title and subtitle. With the data I passed, two already filled out input groups should appear, but nothing does. You can still add new (empty) groups with JS.

Please advise.

Answer 1

Ok, turned out the data needs to be passed not as:

'options' => array('required' => false, 'data' => array(
                array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum'),
                array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum')

but:

'data' => array(
                array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum'),
                array('title' => 'lorem', 'subtitle' => 'ipsum')