Handling removals in "manual" many-to-many associations

[pontus-mp]

Hola!

I'm having some issues figuring out how to neatly handle many-to-many associations when the join-table is handled as a separate entity. Tiny untested pseudo-code to illustrate:

class Left {
    #[OneToMany(targetEntity: Join::class, mappedBy: "left", cascade: ['persist', 'remove'] )]
    private Collection $joins;
}

class Join {
    // Pretend we want some additional properties on Join that prevents using a real ManyToMany

    #[ManyToOne(targetEntity: Left::class, cascade: ['persist', 'remove'], inversedBy: "joins")]
    private Left $left;
    #[ManyToOne(targetEntity: Right::class, cascade: ['persist', 'remove'], inversedBy: "joins")]
    private Right $right;
}

class Right {
    #[OneToMany(mappedBy: "right", targetEntity: Join::class, cascade: ['persist', 'remove'] )]
    private Collection $joins;
}

Now, if one were to add some methods to Left to handle the relation one gets into some problems.

class Left {
    // The relation is the same as before

    public function connect(Right $right): void {
        $this->joins->add(new Join($this, $right));
    }

    public function disconnect(Right $right): void {
        // Uh oh, the entity "Join" is the owning side so updating $this->joins won't reflect in the DB...
    }
}

The only ways I figured out to handle this use-case is to either:

• Pass the EntityManager as a parameter to detach (yuck)
• Use some sort of Service-class that hides the EntityManager usage (slightly yuck)

Is there some other, neater way to do this?