Remove support for entity namespaces (Foo:Bar)

[Majkl578]

Another possibly controversial PR removing existing feature. Entity namespaces are basically obsolete since PHP 5.5 released 4.5 years ago and are superseded by much safer ::class pseudo-constant, which is refactoring- and autocomplete-friendly in IDEs.

[Ocramius]

👍

[Xymanek]

I'm using this notation in DQL rather than FQCN as they can be quite long. Take a look at following:

• Acme\Cms\Modules\BlogModule\Entity\Article (yes, this is a bit on extreme side but it shows the idea)
• Blog:Article or BlogModule:Article

Removing this feature will make using DQL without builder quite cumbersome I think

[Majkl578]

Removing this feature will make using DQL without builder quite cumbersome I think

The issue with entity namespaces is that they're solving a problem that doesn't exist anymore (it did back then when Doctrine 2.0 was released for PHP 5.3, ::class is PHP 5.5+). Furthermore, it makes code harder to maintain, harder to read (subjectively) and harder to refactor (rename class, move to different namespace).

SELECT a FROM BlogModule:Article a WHERE a.author = :author

would become:

SELECT a FROM ' . Article::class . ' a WHERE a.author = :author

And with query builder, you won't even need string concatenation:

$qb->select('a')
    ->from(Article::class, 'a')
    ->where('a.author = :author')

[Majkl578]

Finally ready for shipping.