How to validate unique entities in an entity collection in symfony2

Question

I have an entity with a OneToMany relation to another entity, when I persist the parent entity I want to ensure the children contain no duplicates.

Here\'s the class

Answer 1

Here is a version working with multiple fields just like UniqueEntity does. Validation fails if multiple objects have same values.

Usage:

/**
* ....
* @App\UniqueInCollection(fields={"name", "email"})
*/
private $contacts;
//Validation fails if multiple contacts have same name AND email

The constraint class ...

The validator itself ....

propertyAccessor = PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor();
    }

    /**
     * @param mixed $collection
     * @param Constraint $constraint
     * @throws \Exception
     */
    public function validate($collection, Constraint $constraint)
    {
        if (!$constraint instanceof UniqueInCollection) {
            throw new UnexpectedTypeException($constraint, UniqueInCollection::class);
        }

        if (null === $collection) {
            return;
        }

        if (!\is_array($collection) && !$collection instanceof \IteratorAggregate) {
            throw new UnexpectedValueException($collection, 'array|IteratorAggregate');
        }

        if ($constraint->fields === null) {
            throw new \Exception('Option propertyPath can not be null');
        }

        if(is_array($constraint->fields)) $fields = $constraint->fields;
        else $fields = [$constraint->fields];


        $propertyValues = [];
        foreach ($collection as $key => $element) {
            $propertyValue = [];
            foreach ($fields as $field) {
                $propertyValue[] = $this->propertyAccessor->getValue($element, $field);
            }


            if (in_array($propertyValue, $propertyValues, true)) {

                $this->context->buildViolation($constraint->message)
                    ->atPath(sprintf('[%s]', $key))
                    ->addViolation();
            }

            $propertyValues[] = $propertyValue;
        }

    }
}