Symfony2/Doctrine2 Inheritance

Doctrine provides the means to specify the visibility of generated fields. Either protected or private. The default is private.

The problem is that the Symfony command that invokes Doctrine offers no way to change this.

Creating your own subclass of the standard Symfony command will allow you more control over the generation process. This might help you along.

namespace Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Command;

use Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\Command as DC;
use Doctrine\ORM\Tools\EntityGenerator;

class GenerateEntitiesDoctrineCommand extends DC\GenerateEntitiesDoctrineCommand
{

    protected function configure()
    {
        parent::configure();
        $this->setName('foo:generate:entities');
    }

    /**
     * get a doctrine entity generator
     *
     * @return EntityGenerator
     */
    protected function getEntityGenerator()
    {
        $entityGenerator = new EntityGenerator();
        $entityGenerator->setGenerateAnnotations(true);
        $entityGenerator->setGenerateStubMethods(true);
        $entityGenerator->setRegenerateEntityIfExists(false);
        $entityGenerator->setUpdateEntityIfExists(true);
        $entityGenerator->setNumSpaces(4);
        $entityGenerator->setAnnotationPrefix('ORM\\');
        $entityGenerator->setFieldVisibility($entityGenerator::FIELD_VISIBLE_PROTECTED);

        return $entityGenerator;
    }
}

This does two things. It sets the property visibility to protected. This prevents php errors.

$entityGenerator->setFieldVisibility($entityGenerator::FIELD_VISIBLE_PROTECTED);

It also copies the annotations from mapped super class into the entity class.

$entityGenerator->setGenerateAnnotations(true);

Here's some example code where properties are inherited from a base class and their visibility and annotations copy correctly into the inheriting class

/** @ORM\MappedSuperclass */
class DataSuper {
    /**
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    protected $id;
    /**
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Campaign", inversedBy="data")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="campaign_id", referencedColumnName="id")
     * @Exclude
     */
    protected $campaign;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="text", nullable=true, name="data")
     */
    protected $data;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="datetime")
     */
    protected $createdDate;
}


/**
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\DataRepository")
 * @ORM\Table(name="data")
 * @ExclusionPolicy("none")
 */
class Data extends DataSuper
{
}

After generation the Data class looks like:

class Data extends DataSuper
{

/**
 * @var integer
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer", precision=0, scale=0, nullable=false, unique=false)
 * @ORM\Id
 * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
 */
protected $id;

/**
 * @var string
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="data", type="text", precision=0, scale=0, nullable=true, unique=false)
 */
protected $data;

/**
 * @var \DateTime
 *
 * @ORM\Column(name="createdDate", type="datetime", precision=0, scale=0, nullable=false, unique=false)
 */
protected $createdDate;

/**
 * @var \Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\Campaign
 *
 * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\Campaign", inversedBy="data")
 * @ORM\JoinColumns({
 *   @ORM\JoinColumn(name="campaign_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
 * })
 */
protected $campaign;


/**
 * Get id
 *
 * @return integer 
 */
public function getId()
{
    return $this->id;
}

/**
 * Set data
 *
 * @param string $data
 * @return Data
 */
public function setData($data)
{
    $this->data = $data;

    return $this;
}

/**
 * Get data
 *
 * @return string 
 */
public function getData()
{
    return $this->data;
}

/**
 * Set createdDate
 *
 * @param \DateTime $createdDate
 * @return Data
 */
public function setCreatedDate($createdDate)
{
    $this->createdDate = $createdDate;

    return $this;
}

/**
 * Get createdDate
 *
 * @return \DateTime 
 */
public function getCreatedDate()
{
    return $this->createdDate;
}

/**
 * Set campaign
 *
 * @param \Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\Campaign $campaign
 * @return Data
 */
public function setCampaign(\Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\Campaign $campaign = null)
{
    $this->campaign = $campaign;

    return $this;
}

/**
 * Get campaign
 *
 * @return \Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Entity\Campaign 
 */
public function getCampaign()
{
    return $this->campaign;
}
}

And the table structure is correct once you do:

php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force

The exception is being thrown because BaseFoodType::budget is a public property and doctrine:generate:entities created a private property in your Drink / Snack classes extending BaseFoodType ( which is not correct but the way the command works by now ).

Property visibility in a subclass can only be the same level or more liberate ( private -> protected -> public ) but never more restrictive.

doctrine:generate:entities did not take superclass's public property into account when generating the getters/setters as the implementation with a public property is non-standard.

Therefore you will have to adjust the generated class manually.

I recommend using private/protected properties combined with getters & setters.