DDC-1879: Orphans are neither nulled nor removed when merging a graph of detached entities

[doctrinebot]

Jira issue originally created by user systho:

When merging a graph of detached entities, the created entitied are created and the updated entities are updated but the non-present entities (which exist in the database but are not in the graph) are neither removed nor have them their association column nullified.

Example :

In my code I have 2 entities : Parent and Child. There is a OneToMany(cascade={"all"}, orphanRemoval=true) relation defined in Parent.

In my database I have a Parent row with an id of 1, which has 3 Children with ids 1,2,3.

When I write the following code, I expect the Parent with id 1 and the Child with id 2 to be updated, a new Child to be created and the Child with id 1 and 3 to be deleted.

$parent = new Parent(); $parent->id = 1  // detached entity
$existing_child = new Child(); $child->id = 2 // detached entity
$new_child = new Child(); // new entity
$dinner->addChild($existing_child);
$dinner->addChild($new_child);

$em->merge($dinner);

$em->flush();

The objects I expect to be created and updated have the correct behaviour but the old children are not touched, they are still present in the database.

[doctrinebot]

Comment created by @Ocramius:

I don't think this is valid. Orphan removal scheduling is handled only when an unit of work is available.

What's the state of $dinner before your example? Can you var_dump it?

[MatthiasKuehneEllerhold]

@Ocramius I've ran into the same problem today. So I guess this issue is still relevant?

I guess $dinner was meant to be $parent in systho example?
$parent has ID 1 and an ArrayCollection (I guess?) with just the two childs:

• existing child (ID 2)
• and new child (without an ID yet)

Our expections are:

• the child with ID 2 should get updated
• the new child should get inserted (probably ID 4)
• the children 1 & 3 to be deleted

What I've tried:

$dbParent = $em->getRepository(..)->find(1);
echo $dbParent->getChildren()->count(); // echos '3'

echo $parent->getChildren()->count(); // echos '2'
$newDbParent = $em->merge($parent);
$em->flush();

echo $newDbParent->getChildren()->count(); // echos '2' as expected

But the obsolete children were never deleted from the database.
I hooked up an SQL query logger to doctrine and there are only UPDATE & INSERT queries in it, the DELETE queries are missing.

Mapping annotation of $children in class Parent:

    /**
     * @var Child[]|ArrayCollection
     * @ORM\OneToMany(
     *     targetEntity="Child",
     *     mappedBy="parent",
     *     cascade={"all"},
     *     orphanRemoval=true,
     *     fetch="EAGER"
     * )
     */
    protected $children;

Mapping annotation of $parent in class Child:

    /**
     * @var Parent
     * @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Parent", inversedBy="children", cascade={"all"})
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="parent", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=false)
     */
    protected $parent;

I'm using doctrine/orm in a zend-expressive project with these versions:

dasprid/container-interop-doctrine       1.0.0             
doctrine/annotations                     v1.5.0            
doctrine/cache                           v1.7.1            
doctrine/collections                     v1.5.0            
doctrine/common                          v2.8.1            
doctrine/dbal                            v2.6.2            
doctrine/inflector                       v1.2.0            
doctrine/instantiator                    1.1.0             
doctrine/lexer                           v1.0.1            
doctrine/orm                             v2.5.12 

[lcobucci]

@MatthiasKuehneEllerhold could you please send us a failing test case that reproduces that behaviour? It would help us a lot to identify and fix the issue you're describing.

You can find examples on https://github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/tree/388afb46d0cb3ed0c51332e8df0de9e942c2690b/tests/Doctrine/Tests/ORM/Functional/Ticket

[MatthiasKuehneEllerhold]

I've opened a PR with a failing test case for this: #6850 .

[Liiva]

I'm running into the same issue. In the PR it is mentioned this might be fixed in version 2.6 but as we're using 2.7.1 I assume this is not the case. Any updates on this issue?

I've created a separate repo with a reproducible case here.