entity-listeners.rst

Entity Listeners

Entity listeners that are services must be registered with the entity listener resolver. On top of the annotation in the entity class, you have to tag the service with doctrine.orm.entity_listener for it to be automatically added to the resolver. Use the (optional) entity_manager attribute to specify which entity manager it should be registered with.

Full example:

<?php
// User.php

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\EntityListeners({"UserListener"})
 */
class User
{
    // ....
}

services:
    user_listener:
        class: \UserListener
        tags:
            # Minimal configuration below
            - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener }
            # Or, optionally, you can give the entity manager name as below
            #- { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, entity_manager: custom }

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    <services>
        <service id="user_listener" class="UserListener">
            <!-- entity_manager attribute is optional -->
            <tag name="doctrine.orm.entity_listener" entity_manager="custom" />
        </service>
    </services>
</container>

Starting with doctrine/orm 2.5 and Doctrine bundle 1.5.2, instead of registering the entity listener on the entity, you can declare all options from the service definition:

services:
    user_listener:
        class: \UserListener
        tags:
            -
                name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener
                event: preUpdate
                entity: App\Entity\User
                # Entity manager name is optional
                entity_manager: custom

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    <services>
        <service id="user_listener" class="UserListener">
            <!-- entity_manager attribute is optional -->
            <tag 
                name="doctrine.orm.entity_listener" 
                event="preUpdate"
                entity="App\Entity\User"
                entity_manager="custom"
            />
        </service>
    </services>
</container>

See also https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/events.html#entity-listeners for more info on entity listeners and the resolver required by Symfony.

Lazy Entity Listeners

You can use the lazy attribute on the tag to make sure the listener services are only instantiated when they are actually used.

services:
    lazy_user_listener:
        class: \UserListener
        tags:
            - { name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener, lazy: true }

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    <services>
        <service id="lazy_user_listener" class="UserListener">
            <tag name="doctrine.orm.entity_listener" event="preUpdate" entity="App\Entity\User" lazy="true" />            
        </service>
    </services>
</container>