Doctrine2 - How can I order by a discriminator column?

Question

How should I go about ordering by a discriminator column in a doctrine repository query?

I have a pretty straight forward setup, I have different types of payment detai

Answer 1

Even though TYPE is not implemented yet into the core of doctrine it's still possible to implement it as a custom user function.

Someone already did an amazing job and implemented it for us. Just in case the resource will be removed in the future, here is a slightly adjusted version for php7+:

getQueryComponent($this->dqlAlias)['metadata'];
        $tableAlias = $sqlWalker->getSQLTableAlias($class->getTableName(), $this->dqlAlias);

        if (!isset($class->discriminatorColumn['name'])) {
            $message = 'TYPE() only supports entities with a discriminator column.';
            throw QueryException::semanticalError($message);
        }

        return $tableAlias . '.' . $class->discriminatorColumn['name'];
    }

    public function parse(Parser $parser)
    {
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_IDENTIFIER);
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_OPEN_PARENTHESIS);
        $this->dqlAlias = $parser->IdentificationVariable();
        $parser->match(Lexer::T_CLOSE_PARENTHESIS);
    }
}

Now you can order by the discriminator column by doing something like:

SELECT e, TYPE(e) AS HIDDEN my_type FROM Entity e ORDER BY my_type DESC;