Symfony2 Child Form Events Propagation

Question

I have two entities. Entity A is a parent of Entity B. I am creating a REST for entity A which contains entity B as children.

class EntityA {
   private $name;
   private $type;

   private $bs;
}

class EntityB {
   private $entityA;
   private $color;
}

I basically do a post/put with something like:

{ "name": "anamehere", "type": "atypehere", "bs": [{"color": "blue"}] }

For the important part, the form of Entity A looks something like this:

/**
 * @param FormBuilderInterface $builder
 * @param array $options
 */
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
    $builder
        ->add('name', TextType::class)
        ->add('type', TextType::class)
        ->add('bs', CollectionType::class, array(
            'entry_type' => EntityB::class,
            'allow_add' => true,
            'allow_delete' => true,
            'by_reference' => false,
        ));

    $builder->addEventListener(FormEvents::SUBMIT, array($this, 'onSubmitData'));

}

public function onSubmitData(FormEvent $event) {
    // Do Something
}

And my Entity B's form looks something like:

/**
 * @param FormBuilderInterface $builder
 * @param array $options
 */
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
    $builder
        ->add('color', TextType::class);

    $builder->addEventListener(FormEvents::SUBMIT, array($this, 'onSubmitData'));

}

public function onSubmitData(FormEvent $event) {
    // Do Something else
}

The problem that I am having is that when I do that POST/PUT the entity B form event onSubmitData is not being called. How can I propagate the event from the EntityA form to the EntityB form. It is working properly in EntityAType

Answer 1

I had the same question as you had, and with a bit of tests I found the answer, so I'm answering here, in case somebody else finds his way here: There IS event propagation for Child form events.

The exact lifecycle is:

Parent PRE_SUBMIT
                     Child PRE_SUBMIT
                                        GrandChild PRE_SUBMIT
                                        GrandChild SUBMIT
                                        GrandChild POST_SUBMIT
                     Child SUBMIT
                     Child POST_SUBMIT
Parent SUBMIT
Parent POST_SUBMIT  

About your problem, my guess is that it is caused by the fact you don't use directly EntityB's form in EntityA's form, but a CollectionType of EntityB's form type, and it seems that CollectionType does not naturally dispatch SUBMIT events for each for its children.

Hope this helps anyone!