How to use a findBy method with comparative criteria

I'd need to use a "magic finder" findBy method using comparative criteria (not only exact criteria). In other words, I need to do something like this:

$result = $purchases_repository->findBy(array("prize" => ">200"));

so that I'd get all purchases where the prize is above 200.

The class Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository implements Doctrine\Common\Collections\Selectable API.

The Selectable interface is very flexible and quite new, but it will allow you to handle comparisons and more complex criteria easily on both repositories and single collections of items, regardless if in ORM or ODM or completely separate problems.

This would be a comparison criteria as you just requested as in Doctrine ORM 2.3.2:

$criteria = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria();
$criteria->where(\Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria::expr()->gt('prize', 200));

$result = $entityRepository->matching($criteria);

The major advantage in this API is that you are implementing some sort of strategy pattern here, and it works with repositories, collections, lazy collections and everywhere the Selectable API is implemented.

This allows you to get rid of dozens of special methods you wrote for your repositories (like findOneBySomethingWithParticularRule), and instead focus on writing your own criteria classes, each representing one of these particular filters.

This is an example using the Expr() Class - I needed this too some days ago and it took me some time to find out what is the exact syntax and way of usage:

/**
 * fetches Products that are more expansive than the given price
 * 
 * @param int $price
 * @return array
 */
public function findProductsExpensiveThan($price)
{
  $em = $this->getEntityManager();
  $qb = $em->createQueryBuilder();

  $q  = $qb->select(array('p'))
           ->from('YourProductBundle:Product', 'p')
           ->where(
             $qb->expr()->gt('p.price', $price)
           )
           ->orderBy('p.price', 'DESC')
           ->getQuery();

  return $q->getResult();
}

You have to use either DQL or the QueryBuilder. E.g. in your Purchase-EntityRepository you could do something like this:

$q = $this->createQueryBuilder('p')
          ->where('p.prize > :purchasePrize')
          ->setParameter('purchasePrize', 200)
          ->getQuery();

$q->getResult();

For even more complex scenarios take a look at the Expr() class.

$criteria = new \Doctrine\Common\Collections\Criteria();
    $criteria->where($criteria->expr()->gt('id', 'id'))
        ->setMaxResults(1)
        ->orderBy(array("id" => $criteria::DESC));

$results = $articlesRepo->matching($criteria);

The Symfony documentation now explicitly shows how to do this:

$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$query = $em->createQuery(
    'SELECT p
    FROM AppBundle:Product p
    WHERE p.price > :price
    ORDER BY p.price ASC'
)->setParameter('price', '19.99');    
$products = $query->getResult();

From http://symfony.com/doc/2.8/book/doctrine.html#querying-for-objects-with-dql

Copying the findBy query and modifying it to return your expected result is a good approach.

I like to use such static methods:

$result = $purchases_repository->matching(
    Criteria::create()->where(
        Criteria::expr()->gt('prize', 200)
    )
);

Of course, you can push logic when it is 1 condition, but when you have more conditions it is better to divide it into fragments, configure and pass it to the method:

$expr = Criteria::expr();

$criteria = Criteria::create();
$criteria->where($expr->gt('prize', 200));
$criteria->orderBy(['prize' => Criteria::DESC]);

$result = $purchases_repository->matching($criteria);