Using Doctrine, is it possible to map to properties which don't actually exist using magic methods?
I'm doing the mapping with YAML.
For example, if I wanted to map to a property named "demo", but SomeClass::$demo didn't actually exist. I'd want to some combination of __get(), __set(), __isset() and __call() to handle $demo (and getDemo() and setDemo()) and do something else with them.
I've tried setting this up, but I'm getting an error:
Uncaught exception 'ReflectionException' with message 'Property My\Bundle\DemoBundle\Entity\SomeClass::$demo does not exist'
I'm not sure if there is something special with the ReflectionProperty that causes it to miss my magic methods, or if I'm maybe missing a magic function. However, as far as I can tell, ReflectionProperty should interact with them.
Any ideas?
UPDATE:
Upon further investigation, it looks like the ReflectionProperty constructor will throw an exception and won't trigger the magic methods.
Does anyone else know of means to map Doctrine to dynamic properties?
Thanks.
UPDATE 2:
To example what I'm trying to accomplish.
Basically, I have a generic User object which just contains the base properties needed to handle actually being a user (roles, password, salt, username, etc.). However, I want to be able to extend this object to add application-and-user-specific meta data.
So, say I create a Forum bundle. I could then I could dynamically hook up meta data related to the user for use with the Forum. I don't want to put it directly in the User bundle, because then the User bundle becomes less flexible.
If I could somehow dynamically inject new data in to the user, it could all be loaded in a single query with the user, instead of having to be loaded in a separate query. I know there are some other methods to do this, which I've already explored and even used to a limited extend. However, it'd be much nicer if I could dynamically create these associations, which really shouldn't be that difficult of a leap.
If you don't need to search on these dynamic properties then just add a property called data to your entity and map it to a doctrine array type. Now do your majic stuff and store the dynamic properties in the data array.
A second approach might be along these lines: http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/doctrine/resolve_target_entity.html. For each installation you might be able to give the administrators of making a custom entity.
But as long as you don't need to directly query on your dynamic properties then the first method works well.