Adding Express Attributes

Developing with Concrete
#1

Hi, I’m trying to do add attributes programmatically to an Express database, I found in the documentation
use Express;

$object = Express::buildObject(‘marina2’, ‘marinas2’, ‘Marina2’);
$object->addAttribute(‘text’, ‘Name’, ‘marina_name’);
$object->addAttribute(‘address’, ‘Address’, ‘marina_address’);
$object = $object->save();

That works great to add a new database and add attributes to it, but I want to add attributes to an existing database

I tried grabbing the database object with

$object = Express::getObjectByHandle(‘marina’);

But that shows an error, Call to undefined method Concrete\Core\Entity\Express\Entity::addAttribute() Does anyone have an example on how to do this? Thanks

#2

I think you cannot do it using current Concrete api. At least I haven’t found any class that can do it.
If someone knows better, I will be happy to be proved wrong:D

Express::buildObject() will create instance of Concrete\Core\Express\ObjectBuilder
where addAttribute() method is available.
Though save() method will return Concrete\Core\Entity\Express\Entity instance.

Express::getObjectByHandle(‘marina’) will return Concrete\Core\Entity\Express\Entity
so addAttribute() method is not available.

Going back to Concrete\Core\Express\ObjectBuilder class, it seems it can only build express objects from zero. There isn’t any setObject()/setEntity() method or something like that.

I was able to add attribute to existing Express object, but only by operating on entity manager directly (blatantly say by “stealing” code from core files). Though I don’t have that much experience with Express so I don’t know if it was ingenious or sketchy.

#3

In case the slack channel gets overlooked (i guess a lot of the activity has moved to the forums):

you need to get a ObjectBuilder from that Express Object (like Express::buildObject provides) :

if (is_object(Express::getObjectByHandle('member'))) {
  $member = Express::getObjectByHandle('member');
  $cat = $member->getAttributeKeyCategory();
  $exists = $cat->getAttributeKeyByHandle('member_pos');
  if (!is_object($exists)) {
    $builder = $this->app->make(ObjectBuilder::class);
    $builder->setEntity($member);
    $builder->addAttribute('number', 'Position', 'member_pos');
    $builder->save();
  }
}

in the above example i added the position to existing express Members. hopefully that points you to the right direction

#4

How did you make setEntity() method work? I can not see any method like that in ObjectBuilder class. Any magic function doesn’t seem to work too.

#5

Just came back from the docs. Seems like it is not there and the paste i sent in the previous reply relies on this extension:

namespace Concrete\Package\YourPackage;
use Concrete\Core\Express\ObjectBuilder as CoreObjectBuilder;
class ObjectBuilder extends CoreObjectBuilder
{
    public function setEntity($entity)
    {
        $this->entity = $entity;
    }
}
#6

Thanks, it makes sense now.
Cheers

#7

Hi all. I came across this post as it is exactly what I needed. But unfortunately, I am getting an error I can’t solve.

Object { type: “Doctrine\ORM\Exception\EntityMissingAssignedId”, message: “Entity of type Concrete\Core\Entity\Attribute\Key\Settings\TextSettings is missing an assigned ID for field ‘key’. The identifier generation strategy for this entity requires the ID field to be populated before EntityManager#persist() is called. If you want automatically generated identifiers instead you need to adjust the metadata mapping accordingly.”, code: 0, … }

Any ideas?

#8

Not sure why but this error has stopped. I think it was reinstalling the package.

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