Laravel doctrine2 many to many relation with extra column

Question

So I'm beginning to struggle with Doctrine2 when it comes to a many-to-many relation for a project where the relation has 1 extra column.

I have the following tables:

• Profiles
  • id
  • extra data

• Skills

  • id
  • name

• profile_has_skills

  • profile_id
  • skill_id
  • level

Now I added the level column later on, and noticed some problems happening, of course I am missing level now whenever I try to create the relation. My question is, with the code below, how would I go over to add this in my doctrine?

My controller:

public function store(Request $request)
{
    $time = new DateTime();

    $this->validate($request, [
        'name' => 'required',
        'lastname' => 'required',
        'gender' => 'required',
        'profile_skills' => 'required'
    ]);

    $this->em->getConnection()->beginTransaction();

    try {
        $profile = new Profile(
            $request->input('company_id'),
            $request->input('name'),
            $request->input('lastname'),
            $request->input('gender'),
            new DateTime(),
            $time,
            $time
        );

        $company = $this->em->getRepository(Company::class)->find($request->input('company_id'));
        $profile->addCompany($company);

        foreach($request->input('profile_skills') as $skill => $level) {
            $skill = $this->em->getRepository(Skill::class)->find($skill);
            $skill->level = $level;
            $profile->addSkill($skill);
        }

        $this->em->persist($profile);
        $this->em->flush();
        $this->em->getConnection()->commit();

    } catch (OptimisticLockException $e) {

        $this->em->getConnection()->rollBack();

        throw $e;
    }

    return redirect(route('profiles.index'));
}

My ProfileHasSkill entity looks as follow:

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="profile_has_skill")
 *
 */
class ProfileHasSkill
{
/**
 * @ORM\Id
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue
 * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
 */
protected $id;

/**
 * @Column(type="integer", name="profile_id")
 */
protected $profile_id;


/**
 * @Column(type="integer", name="skill_id")
 */
protected $skill_id;

/**
 * @Column(type="integer", name="level")
 */
protected $level;

/**
 * @param $profile_id
 * @param $skill_id
 * @param $level
 */
public function __construct($profile_id, $skill_id, $level = 0)
{
    $this->profile_id = $profile_id;
    $this->skill_id = $skill_id;
    $this->level = $level;
}

And my addSkill method inside the profile entity is as follow:

public function addSkill(Skill $skill)
{
    if ($this->skills->contains($skill)) {
        return;
    }
    return $this->skills->add($skill);
}

But anytime I try to run this it gives me the following error

An exception occurred while executing 
'INSERT INTO profile_has_skill (profile_id, skill_id) VALUES (?, ?)' 
with params [3, 2]: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1364 Field 'level' 
doesn't have a default value

Now I know one way to get rid of this error is setting a default value in the database, but I much rather just find out why it's not picking up my skill level that I'm also passing?

Answer 1

As per my solution which has worked, by reading another question passed by @Nicola Havric - Read as follow That doctrine does not support extra columns in a many-to-many relation. Thus you should use the relation as it's own entity. My own solution was to change the way I wanted it to run with flushing.

In my controller I changed my code as follow:

try {
    $profile = new Profile(
        $request->input('company_id'),
        $request->input('name'),
        $request->input('lastname'),
        $request->input('gender'),
        new DateTime(),
        $time,
        $time
    );

    $company = $this->em->getRepository(Company::class)->find($request->input('company_id'));
    $profile->addCompany($company);
    //Flush the user, so I can grab it's profile ID
    $this->em->persist($profile);
    $this->em->flush();

    foreach($request->input('profile_skills') as $skill => $level) {
        $skill = $this->em->getRepository(Skill::class)->find($skill);
        $skill->level = $level;
        $profile->addSkill($skill);
    }


    $this->em->getConnection()->commit();

Inside my Profile Entity function:

public function addSkill(Skill $skill)
{
    //I left this check since it only checks if the relation is set already. If so, it will skip it.
    if ($this->skills->contains($skill)) {
        return;
    }

    //Since this function gets called inside a loop, I can call the entity to add a new "relation" to the table.
    (new ProfileHasSkill($this->getId(), $skill, $skill->level))->addSkill($this->getId(), $skill, $skill->level);

    return true;
}

Inside my ProfileHasSkill entity:

 public function addSkill($profileId, $skill)
{
    //Creating a new ProfileHasSkill inside the table.
    $profileSkill = new ProfileHasSkill(
        $profileId,
        $skill->getId(),
        $skill->level
    );

    /*Since I do a roll-back inside my controller in case something goes wrong.
       I decided to add the flush here. 
       As far no additional checks where needed in my case 
       since I require a Profile instance and a Skill instance inside the Profile entity.*/
    EntityManager::persist($profileSkill);
    EntityManager::flush();
}