doctrine act as signable plugin - new releases

After few months, new versions 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 of sfDoctrineActAsSignablePlugin have been released. In short, the plugin provides a Signable behavior which automatically stores information on who has created or updated a given object.

what's new

A fellow symfony developer, Daniel Möllenbeck, suggested that there are some options missing in the behavior configuration. Until version 1.2.1, the onDelete option was hardcoded as CASCADE, which - as Daniel emphasised - may cause problems when a given user is supposed to be deleted (physically from the database, not softDeleted).

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_created_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (created_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE CASCADE;

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_updated_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (updated_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE CASCADE;

Let's imagine user enters customers over and over, then leaves the company. Now the admin deletes the user - probably the hard way (directly on the database, maybe the user is auto-created from somewhere...) --> The constraint will trigger the deletion of all customers created by that user. I have some doubt anybody would be happy about that.

Having the constraint like that does the trick:

a) allow NULL values in created_by/updated_by columns:

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_created_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (created_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE SET NULL;

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_updated_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (updated_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE SET NULL;

b) forbid the deletion of the user:

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_created_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (created_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE RESTRICT;

ALTER TABLE customer
ADD CONSTRAINT customer_updated_by_sf_guard_user_id
FOREIGN KEY (updated_by)
REFERENCES sf_guard_user(id)
ON DELETE RESTRICT;

c) do nothing

moreover

Another fellow symfony developer, Christoph Berg, helped me to trace the bug with fixtures on created_by/updated_by values. Now, the bug is fixed and all fixture data works perfectly.

the community

Taking the opportunity, I'd like to thank Daniel, Christoph and all other symfony developers who share their opinions on my work - they help to find bugs and suggest some good ideas on how to improve the code. Thanks to you, the plugin gets better and better all the time. Thanks, guys!

Please, feel free to share your opinion and comment on the plugin!

symfony custom configuration files

dynamic and cross-application configuration

If your project gets very big and it has several applications, you may want to create cross-application configuration - store it in one place and let all applications use it (no matter how big it is). Or simply if your configuration is becoming really big and you want to arrange it somehow, custom config files is exactly what you are looking for!

how to do that

That's only three easy steps. First, let's create a custom configuration YAML file (config/something.yml, in the project main directory, not the app config directory) and put some data there:

prod:
  test:  ok

dev:
  test: ko

all:
  foo:  bar
  john: doe

The second step is to create/update a config handler YAML file (config/config_handlers.yml) with following example content:

config/something.yml:
  class:    sfDefineEnvironmentConfigHandler
  param:
    prefix: something_

The last step is to register the configuration file in all applications you want (after this step, the configuration will be available for an application). Use the application configuration class (e.g. apps/frontend/config/frontendConfiguration.class.php):

public function configure()
{
  ....
  require_once($this->getConfigCache()->checkConfig('config/something.yml'));
}

Now all config options defined in the new file are available in the application with the _something prefix. The best way to check if the new file is available for the application is to run it in the dev mode in the browser and check the web debug toolbar, config icon, settings section. All configuration available for the application is displayed there. If you followed all three steps above, new file configuration should be available.

sfAdminDashPlugin trick

This plugin provides an easy-to use menu divided into sections, which is configurable in YAML files. If you want to have different menus for different applications, you just have to put all configuration in the application config (by default, it's stored in the plugin config). One way is to put all menu config in the app.yml file, but, as mentioned before, it can make the app.yml file grow to an enormous size, so a better solution is to create a menu.yml file, which is loaded by the config handler. Everything is done the same way as before:

• create apps/APP/config/menu.yml file and define sfAdminDash menu there
• create or update (if exists) the config handler file (apps/APP/config/config_handlers.yml)
• finally, update the APP configuration class (apps/APP/config/APPConfiguration.class.php) by registering new config file

I hope some of you will find this flexible configuration useful :).