Using DataMapper to work with domain entities without per field setters

This is an example of using DataMapper with entities that avoid setters/getters for each field.

Pre-requisites

You already have SonataAdmin and DoctrineORM up and running.
You already have an Entity class, in this example that class will be called Example.
You already have an Admin set up, in this example it's called ExampleAdmin.

If there is a requirement for the entity to have domain specific methods instead of getters/setters for each entity field then it won't work with SonataAdmin out of the box. But Symfony Form component provides DataMapper that can be used to make it work. Symfony itself lacks examples of using DataMapper but there is an article by webmozart that covers it - https://webmozart.io/blog/2015/09/09/value-objects-in-symfony-forms/

Example Entity

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        // src/Entity/Example.php

namespace App\Entity;

final class Example
{
    private string $name;

    private string $description;

    public function __construct(string $name, string $description)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
        $this->description = $description;
    }

    public function update(string $description)
    {
        $this->description = $description
    }

    // rest of the code goes here
}
    

DataMapper

To be able to set entity data without the possibility to use setters a DataMapper should be created:

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        // src/Form/DataMapper/ExampleDataMapper.php

namespace App\Form\DataMapper;

use Symfony\Component\Form\DataMapperInterface;
use App\Entity\Example;

final class ExampleDataMapper implements DataMapperInterface
{
    /**
     * @param Example $data
     * @param FormInterface[]|\Traversable $forms
     */
    public function mapDataToForms($data, $forms)
    {
        if (null !== $data) {
            $forms = iterator_to_array($forms);
            $forms['name']->setData($data->getName());
            $forms['description']->setData($data->getDescription());
        }
    }

    /**
     * @param FormInterface[]|\Traversable $forms
     * @param Example $data
     */
    public function mapFormsToData($forms, &$data)
    {
        $forms = iterator_to_array($forms);

        if (null === $data->getId()) {
            $name = $forms['name']->getData();
            $description = $forms['description']->getData();

            // New entity is created
            $data = new Example(
                $name,
                $description
            );
        } else {
            $data->update(
                $forms['description']->getData()
            );
        }
    }
}
    

Admin class

Now we need to configure the form to use our ExampleDataMapper:

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        // src/Admin/ExampleAdmin.php

namespace App\Admin;

use Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\AbstractAdmin;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Form\FormMapper;
use App\Form\DataMapper\ExampleDataMapper;

final class ExampleAdmin extends AbstractAdmin
{
    protected function configureFormFields(FormMapper $form): void
    {
        $form
            ->add('name', null)
            ->add('description', null);
        ;

        $builder = $form->getFormBuilder();
        $builder->setDataMapper(new ExampleDataMapper());
    }

    // ...
}
    