Tomislav Šantek

This quick post describes a necessary step in embedding a relation in a Symfony 1.4 form.
If you have followed Symfony’s official documentation and forums regarding embedding relations in a form, you may have already seen an example of product and productPhoto forms in a single form.
Here’s the schema:

Product:
columns:
name:           { type: string(255), notnull: true }
price:          { type: decimal, notnull: true }

ProductPhoto:
columns:
product_id:     { type: integer }
filename:       { type: string(255) }
caption:        { type: string(255), notnull: true }
relations:
Product:
alias:        Product
foreignType:  many
foreignAlias: Photos
onDelete:     cascade

Now, when you’re creating/editing the productPhoto form, it’s of paramount importance to tell Symfony not to use product_id field in a form, because that would render an select dropbox with a list of currently available products.
The problem becomes apparent when you try to create new product. Because new product does not yet have a product_id, your product photo will be saved with another product that’s currently selected.
The solution is to use line:

$this->useFields(array('filename', 'caption'));