php - One-To-Many relationship deletes foreign key in Doctrine -

this driving me crazy.

a client can have many vehicles.

this 1 many relationship. when trying save entities error saying foreign key null. when remove doctrine relation , store vehicle separately working fine.

this how created relation:

class vehicle {      ...      /**      * @orm\manytoone(targetentity="client", inversedby="vehicles")      * @orm\joincolumn(name="client_id", referencedcolumnname="id")      */     public $client;  }  class client {      ...      public function __construct()     {         parent::__construct();         $this->vehicles = new \doctrine\common\collections\arraycollection();     }       /**      * @orm\onetomany(targetentity="vehicle", mappedby="client", cascade={"persist"})      */     private $vehicles;  } 

i try save entities this:

$client = new client(); $vehicle = new vehicle(); $client->getvehicles()->add($vehicle); $em->persist($client); $em->flush(); 

next pdo exception saying client_id can't null on vehicle table.

it seems doctrine not copying foreign key correctly.

what doing wrong?

according their docs:

it not possible use join columns pointing non-primary keys.

doctrine think these primary keys , create lazy-loading proxies data, can lead unexpected results. doctrine can performance reasons not validate correctness of settings @ runtime through validate schema command.

obviously need different approach.

a solution given in example:

create table product (     id integer,     name varchar,     primary key(id) ); create table product_attributes (     product_id integer,     attribute_name varchar,     attribute_value varchar,     primary key (product_id, attribute_name) ); 

this schema should mapped product entity follows:

class product {     private $id;     private $name;     private $attributes = array(); } 

where attribute_name column contains key , attribute_value contains value of each array element in $attributes.