Symfony 1.2 added a lot of new and exciting new features to an already great and powerful PHP framework. One of those features is the ability to embed a form into another. So what excatly does this mean?

First consider the model shown in the diagram below:

As shown in the above figure, there is a one-to-one relationship between the company and the contact model.

Here is the schema.yml:

propel:
  _attributes:
    package: lib.model
    defaultIdMethod: native
  company:
    _attributes: { phpName: Company }
    id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', primaryKey: true, autoIncrement: true, required: true }
    name: { type: VARCHAR, size: '255', required: true }
    contact_id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', required: false, foreignTable: contact, foreignReference: id, onDelete: SET NULL, onUpdate: RESTRICT }
    _indexes: { company_FI_1: [contact_id] }
  contact:
    _attributes: { phpName: Contact }
    id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', primaryKey: true, autoIncrement: true, required: true }
    first_name: { type: VARCHAR, size: '255', required: true }
    last_name: { type: VARCHAR, size: '255', required: true }
    company_id: { type: INTEGER, size: '11', required: false, foreignTable: company, foreignReference: id, onDelete: SET NULL, onUpdate: RESTRICT }
    _indexes: { contact_FI_1: [company_id] }

Note that both foriegn keys are not required, that is a must for us to be able to embed the Contact form in the Company form.

Now that we have the schema ready, let us build the sql schema, models, forms, filters, and create the tables.

$ php symfony propel:build-sql
$ php symfony propel:build-model
$ php symfony propel:build-forms
$ php symfony propel:build-filters
$ php symfony propel:insert-sql --env=dev

Now let us generate a module using symfony’s admin generator and see how the generator will handle this relationship.

$ php symfony propel:generate-admin backend Company

By browsing to the category module we just created above we can see the below figure:

Now if we click on the “New” link we get the following screen:

Notice that the “contact_id” foreign column was interpreted by the admin generator as a drop down list. Of course that is not what we had in mind, we want to be able to add a new “Company” along with it’s “Contact”. Thanks to symfony 1.2 ability to embed forms, this can be done very easily.

First open “CompanyForm.class.php” file and edit the configure method to match the following:

public function configure() {

	// get Contact model object
	$contact = $this->getObject()->getContact();

	// contact object is null
	if (is_null($contact)) {

		// create a new Contact object
		$contact = new Contact();

		// set the copmany of the newly created object to the current company
		$contact->setCompany($this->getObject());

		// set the contact of the current company
		$this->getObject()->setContact($contact);

	}

	// create a new contact form
	$contact_form = new ContactForm($contact);

	// embed the contact form in the current company form
	$this->embedForm('contact', $contact_form);

	// remove the contact_id from the form
	unset($this['contact_id']);

}

Next, open the ContactForm.class.php and edit as follows:

public function configure() {

	unset($this['company_id']);

}

Now modify the Company.php model class to delete the contact while delete the company

public function delete(PropelPDO $con = null) {
	$this->getContact()->delete($con);
	parent::delete($con);
}

And last but not least, edit the generator.yml to match the following(this step is optional):

generator:
  class: sfPropelGenerator
  param:
    model_class:           Company
    theme:                 admin
    non_verbose_templates: true
    with_show:             false
    singular:              ~
    plural:                ~
    route_prefix:          company
    with_propel_route:     1

    config:
      actions: ~
      fields:
          contact_id: { label: Company Contact }
      list:
          display: [=name, contact]
      filter:  ~
      form:    ~
      edit:    ~
      new:     ~

Now go to the add new “Company” screen and you should see the following:

Try adding, editing, and deleting some records now to make sure it’s working.

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