Doctrine PHP Merge Function

If you’ve tried Doctrine PHP, you might get pretty frustrated when using the $Record::synchronizeWithArray() function. Why?

$data = array('name' => 'jimbob');

$User->Doctrine::getTable('User')->find(1);

$User->synchronizeWithArray($data);

$User->save();

If you try this code you will find that the synchronizeWithArray() function deletes everything except the ‘name’ field in the record. I think the name ‘synchronize’ is slightly confusing here, as what it really means is “delete everything except what I’m explicitly telling you right now”.

A bit of digging in the API reference turned up a nice function called merge().

$data = array('name' => 'jimbob');

$User->Doctrine::getTable('User')->find(1);

$User->merge($data);

$User->save();

You will find that all the fields except ‘name’ are untouched. Lovely job.