Doctrine: WHERE IN with array of integers

Since I stumbled across this the other day, here’s how you build an SQL query with a WHERE IN condition for an array of integers.

This is surprisingly not intuitive, as you cannot simply pass an array of integers to a prepared statement. Instead, you need to add special binding types to inform Doctrine that this is indeed an array of integers.

It’s very well explained in the documentation under the Parameters Conversion section:
https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-dbal/en/current/reference/data-retrieval-and-manipulation.html#list-of-parameters-conversion
But it is rather hard to find and it took me a while.

The trick is to add the array binding types to the the types parameters to the query method. In the case of integers, it is \Doctrine\DBAL\ArrayParameterType::INTEGER.
Now Doctrine knows how to handle the types in the array while binding the values.

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Typed Arrays with PHPStan types

When dealing with legacy data, you often encounter arrays or associative arrays. These arrays are untyped, which PHPStan, of course, does not accept, resulting in numerous PHPStan errors.

PHPStan, by the way, is a static analysis tool for PHP that enforces strict typing and checks for compliance with PHPDoc annotations, ensuring code is robust and maintainable.
For any serious project you should use it.

For this code:

$array = $this->getUntypedArray();
$res = $this->funcWithInt($array['number']);
...
private function funcWithInt(int $number):int {
    return $number++;
}Code language: PHP (php)

A typical error could be:

Parameter #1 $number of method TestClass::funcWithInt expects int, mixed given.Code language: PHP (php)
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Deploy local build with Deployer7


Deployer is a great tool to deploy your PHP Project.

Deployer executes a set of commands on the target server to build your project and enable the newly built version. A typical deployment process with Deployer involves SSHing into the target machine, where it performs a Git checkout of the project, installs dependencies via Composer, runs build commands, and possibly triggers some database migrations. When everything is successful, it will symlink the webroot to the new release.

On some servers, however, there are limitations that make this process unfeasible. For instance, you can’t install Composer, Git isn’t available, the CLI PHP version is different and can’t be changed, or certain asset-building processes aren’t possible because Node.js isn’t installed. This is often the case with shared hosting.

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Symfony integration tests custom header is missing

I am writing an integration test in Symfony with a request that includes custom headers. However, the request fails because the custom header is apparently missing.
What happened was I forgot to add an HTTP prefix to the custom header.

This is a common pitfall when writing integration tests in Symfony and using custom HTTP headers: the necessity to add an HTTP_ prefix to the header in the test.
If you do not add the prefix to the custom header, it will silently not be added to the request, and you have to debug why the request fails.

So this will fail:

static::$client->request('GET', '/ping', [], [], ['X-Custom-Header' => 'custom']);Code language: PHP (php)

And this will work:

static::$client->request('GET', '/ping', [], [], ['HTTP_X-Custom-Header' => 'custom']);Code language: PHP (php)
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Composer bump

Do you miss that the version numbers of your PHP dependencies are automatically updated in the composer.json file after a composer update?
Just like npm or yarn are updating the version numbers in the package.json file.

Then upgrade to Composer 2.4 and say hi to composer dump.
This version introduced a new command composer bump which will update your composer.json file to the precise version which is pinned in the composer.lock file.
It basically will sync the composer.json with the composer.lock versions and will keep the caret version constraints, so you can still make minor or patch version upgrades.

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Testing PDF creation with headless chrome and PHP

I had the task the other day to use a headless chrome to generate PDF files from websites in a PHP app.

The plan was to use chrome-php with a headless chrome to generate the PDF.

Usually you would install chrome/chromium on a linux server via apt and just run chrome from the PATH with chrome.
Since i was on shared hosting i was not sure if this was possible since i was not allowed to run apt commands.
So i tried to use Puppeteer which ships a headless chrome executable and use just this directly.
I installed Puppeteer with npm locally and uploaded the chrome executable to the shared hosting.
Puppeteer will place the headless chrome in the .cache dir in your home directory, f.e.:

~/.cache/puppeteer/chrome/linux-113.0.5672.63/chrome-linux64/chrome

Upload:

scp -r ~/.cache/puppeteer/chrome/linux-113.0.5672.63/chrome-linux64 me@sharedhosting:/usr/home/test

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Stream an image from Symfony controller

When sending an image/file from a Symfony controller you would usually read the file from filesystem.
This you can do by passing the file path to the BinaryFileResponse class and return it in the controller, as described in the docs:
https://symfony.com/doc/current/components/http_foundation.html#serving-files

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\BinaryFileResponse;

$file = 'path/to/file.txt';
$response = new BinaryFileResponse($file);Code language: PHP (php)

But in some cases you might want to create an image dynamically and return it directly from the controller without storing it on the filesystem.
So you can create your image with the GD library and directly stream the GDImage object from the symfony controller with the StreamedResponse class.

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Doctrine migrations and Postgis

Using Postgres with the Postgis extension to integrate GeoData / GIS functionality in your project is not natively supported by Doctrine and Doctrine migrations.

First you have to add the extension to Postgres, even if you use the Postgis docker image like postgis/postgis:14-3.3-alpine.

So add this SQL statement to the up method of your first migration:
$this->addSql('CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis;');

and the DROP statement for the extension to the down method:
$this->addSql('DROP EXTENSION postgis;');

Now, when using Doctrine with Postgres and Postgis extension, migrations still behave a bit odd and try to remove Sequences created by Postgis, because Doctrine migrations does not take Postgis extension’ s built-in Sequences into account.

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Symfony deprecation log channel

Are you annoyed of too many deprecation warnings in you logs of your symfony app?
Probably yes because it is really a lot of noise.
However deprecation logs are still useful to ensure future compatibility of your app.

So since version 5.1 symfony will log deprecations to a dedicated log channel when it exists and ships with this monolog config:

monolog:
    channels:
        - deprecation # Deprecations are logged in the dedicated "deprecation" channel when it existsCode language: PHP (php)

This is added already in the recipe and ships when installing symfony.

Ok, but the handler for this deprecation channel is not configured, so you have to do this yourself.
How? Add this to your monolog config:

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Converting umlaute with symfony String component

There are multiple PHP native ways to convert umlaute and other special characters to ascii save formats, but most of them i experience insufficient in the one or other way.

Since i am using symfony anyway i can use the String component which has a handy slugger which converts any characters into safe ascii characters.
It is very flexible and can be customized with locales, custom replacements and closures.

$umlautString = "Müller Meier";
$slugger = new Symfony\Component\String\Slugger\AsciiSlugger('de');
$slugger->slug($umlautString, $seperator = ' ')->toString();
echo $umlautString; // mueller meierCode language: PHP (php)

I guess this will become my go-to method resp. slugger to convert umlaute in any PHP application.

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