ValueObject for sonata admin edit form instead of entity

Question

Curently for edit entity, we pass pure Entity class to Symfony Form for example:

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);

class Foo 
{
    // private properties
    public function setFoo(?string $foo): void
    {
        $this->foo = $foo;
    }
    // more setters
}

this situation is bad because for a moment we have entity in invalid state.

Is any way to pass data form to ValueObject and after validation pass data into Entity? I don't want to have nullable every field in entity.

The same situation for getters for create new record.

Answer 1

We use custom model manager, that can works with dto, you can find it here https://gitlab.com/symfony-bro/sonata-things/blob/master/Admin/ModelManager/AbstractDtoManager.php Unfortunately we are using it in internaly projects, so no documentation. This is short example how to use:

use SymfonyBro\SonataThings\Admin\ModelManager\AbstractDtoManager;

class CatalogModelManager extends AbstractDtoManager
{
    protected function doCreate($dto)
    {
        $result = new Catalog($dto->title, $dto->parent);
        $result->setDescription($dto->description);

        return $result;
    }

    protected function getModelClassName(): string
    {
        return CatalogDto::class;
    }

    protected function getSubjectClass(): string
    {
        return Catalog::class;
    }
}

You should define this as service (for example app_inventory.sonata_admin.catalog_model_manager) and update admin config

    app_inventory.admin.catalog:
        class: 'App\InventoryBundle\Admin\CatalogAdmin'
        arguments: [~, 'App\InventoryBundle\Entity\Catalog', 'SonataAdminBundle:CRUD']
        calls:
            - ['setModelManager', ['@app_inventory.sonata_admin.catalog_model_manager']]
        tags:
            - { name: 'sonata.admin', manager_type: 'orm', group: 'Equipment', label: 'Equipment type' }

and this is dto

class CatalogDto
{
    public $id;
    public $title;
    public $description;
    public $parent;
    public $items;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->items = [];
    }

    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->id;
    }

    public function __toString()
    {
        return (string)$this->title;
    }
}