Frontside
- view all blog posts with pagination
- view individual blog posts
- add comments
Admin
- view a list of all blog posts with Edit and Delete options.
- view the list of comments with options to Approve/Unapprove or Delete.
Adding comments form
In the Symblog tutorial there was a add comment functionality but for me didn't worked throwing an error like "Catchable Fatal Error: Object of class XYZ could not be converted to string in Doctrine\DBAL\Statement.php" ( see this post about it ). To solve the issue I've added to Entity\Blog.php the following function:
public function __toString()
{
return strval($this->id);
}
Also I modified the CommentType.php to make all the comments unapproved initially:
// \src\CPANA\BasicBlogBundle\Form\CommentType.php
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder
->add('user')
->add('comment')
->add('approved','hidden', array('data' => '0',))
;
}
Uploading photos
What I want to implement: upload photo, copy the file in a specific path and save the name of the file on the databaseMake sure you are pointing to the right path in the template. In src\CPANA\BasicBlogBundle\Resources\views\Blog\show.html.twig:
<img src="{{ asset(['bundles/basicblogbundle/images/', blog.image]|join) }}" alt="{{ blog.title }} image not found" />
At this path: 'bundles/basicblogbundle/images/' I should upload the files in the controller.
Make sure to indicate that the "file" field is not mapped to the Entity.
->add('image', 'file', array('mapped'=>false))
Upload photo and save in database only the name
------------------------------------------------
if ($form->isValid()) {
$newFilename = $form['attachment']->getData()->getClientOriginalName();
// Handle picture upload process
$uploadDir=dirname($this->container->getParameter('kernel.root_dir')) . '/web/bundles/basicblogbundle/images/';
$form['image']->getData()->move($uploadDir,$newFilename);
// End of upload
$blog->setImage($newFilename);
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$em->persist($blog);
$em->flush();
This works fine but we should make sure the file names are unique so they do not conflict when you try to upload a file with same name.
We should add random string function in a class. I do no think this should be considered a service, so I will not register it as a service in the Dependency Injection container.
http://symfony.com/doc/current/best_practices/business-logic.html
Create an Utils folder. Place there RandomString.php, add a static function: randomStr
namespace CPANA\BasicBlogBundle\Utils;
class RandomString
{
public static function randomStr($length = 10)
{
$characters = '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
$charactersLength = strlen($characters);
$randomString = '';
for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
$randomString .= $characters[rand(0, $charactersLength - 1)];
}
return $randomString;
}
After this include the randomStr in the fileName:
$newFilename =RandomString::randomStr() . $form['image']->getData()->getClientOriginalName();
---------------------------
when testing the new feature I noticed that the photo is not available when browsing the blog, reason: the name included in the template is trimmed. I looked in the database , in the "image" column, same there. Checking the type of column I noticed the column is set to varchar(20)!!!! that's the problem right there.
Solution:
modify in Entity\Blog.php the ORM annotation for $image from
@ORM\Column(type="string", length=20)
to
@ORM\Column(type="string", length=255)
After this update the DB schema using Symfony 2 command line:
php app/console cache:clear
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
Pagination
In the home view of the blog I should list all the blog posts. I want to limit to 3 per page an have buttons to navigate though posts.
The path should have a parameter "currentPage" which can be optional, and the default value is 1:
CPANABasicBlogBundle_homepage:
pattern: /blog/{currentPage}
defaults: { _controller: CPANABasicBlogBundle:Blog:blogHome, currentPage: 1 }
requirements:
_method: GET
currentPage: \d+
--------------
Modify the repository as seen here - http://anil.io/post/41/symfony-2-and-doctrine-pagination-with-twig:
public function getAllPosts($currentPage = 1)
{
// Create our query
$query = $this->createQueryBuilder('p')
->orderBy('p.created', 'DESC')
->getQuery();
$paginator = $this->paginate($query, $currentPage);
return $paginator;
}
public function paginate($dql, $page = 1, $limit = 3)
{
$paginator = new Paginator($dql);
$paginator->getQuery()
->setFirstResult($limit * ($page - 1)) // Offset
->setMaxResults($limit); // Limit
return $paginator;
}
----------------------------------------------------
In controller retrieve posts and pass them to view
public function blogHomeAction($currentPage=1)
{
$em = $this->getDoctrine()
->getEntityManager();
$posts = $em->getRepository('CPANABasicBlogBundle:Blog')
->getAllPosts($currentPage);
$iterator=$posts->getIterator();
$limit = 3;
$maxPages = ceil($posts->count()/$limit);
$thisPage = $currentPage;
return $this->render(
'CPANABasicBlogBundle:Blog:home.html.twig', array(
'blogs' => $iterator,
'maxPages'=>$maxPages,
'thisPage' => $thisPage,
)
);
In template showing the posts is the same we just need to add pagination buttons:
This will look nice with some css :)
{% if maxPages > 1 %}
<ul>
{%if thisPage > 1 %}
<li >
<a href="{{ path('CPANABasicBlogBundle_homepage', {currentPage: thisPage-1 < 1 ? 1 : thisPage-1}) }}">«</a>
</li>
{% endif %}
{# Render each page number #}
{% for i in 1..maxPages %}
<li>
<a href="{{ path('CPANABasicBlogBundle_homepage', {currentPage: i}) }}">{{ i }}</a>
</li>
{% endfor %}
{# `»` arrow #}
{%if thisPage < maxPages %}
<li>
<a href="{{ path('CPANABasicBlogBundle_homepage', {currentPage: thisPage+1 <= maxPages ? thisPage+1 : thisPage}) }}">»</a>
</li>
{% endif %}
</ul>
{% endif %}
The photo should not be a mandatory information. I had to do the following modifications to implement that:
Add in controller to the form builder 'required' => false :
->add('image', 'file', array('mapped'=>false,'required' => false,))
Also in controller handle new uploaded file name and path only if it was any file selected in the form:
if (!is_null($form['image']->getData())) {....}
modify the Entity/Blog.php to accept NULL values for image field.
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=255, nullable=true)
Update database using console command.
php app/console cache:clear
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
Fine tuning - allow deleting blog posts even if they have comments
While browsing happily and testing the functionality I discovered I cannot delete an article having comments, receiving some nasty error: "SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1451 Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails ..."
I believe it should be good that an admin to be able to delete an article even if it has comments added to it. So I will modify the Database structure to allow this behavior.
There are two kinds of cascades in Doctrine:
1) ORM level - uses cascade={"remove"} in the association - this is a calculation that is done in the UnitOfWork and does not affect the database structure. When you remove an object, the UnitOfWork will iterate over all objects in the association and remove them.
2) Database level - uses onDelete="CASCADE" on the association's joinColumn - this will add On Delete Cascade to the foreign key column in the database:
@ORM\JoinColumn(name="father_id", referencedColumnName="id", onDelete="CASCADE")
Update the Entity/Comment.php
/**
* @ORM\ManyToOne(targetEntity="Blog", inversedBy="comments")
* @ORM\JoinColumn(name="blog_id", referencedColumnName="id", onDelete="CASCADE")
*/
protected $blog;
Update the database using console:
php app/console cache:clear
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
I will soon add the BasicBlogBundle on Github and Packagist.
