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Custom node type phpcr:managed

dbu edited this page Jun 8, 2011 · 17 revisions

The PHPCR odm stores meta information into the PHPCR node for each document. To avoid collisions and avoid issues with built-in types, every nodes gets the mixin type phpcr:managed that defines a phpcr:alias property. That way, meta information can be added to any node in a clean way.

Set up

Make sure you have a Jackrabbit implementation that supports the register node type operation. It will be available in Jackrabbit 2.3 - until then please follow https://github.com/symfony-cmf/symfony-cmf/wiki/Running-a-Jackrabbit-server to get the right version.

Then you can use the command line tool from phpcr (bin/phpcr) to register the node type (once it is set up properly, see Command line tool configuration).

bin/phpcr odm:phpcr:register-system-node-types

If you use the DoctrinePHPCRBundle you don't need to set up the command line tool. Simply run

app/console doctrine:phpcr:register-system-node-types

What are NodeTypes

JCR defines node types which can be thought of a kind of schema for the repository's nodes. These types define the properties and children a node can have. JCR defines a set of node types that can be readily used. Some node types like nt:file restrict the set of allowed properties others like nt:unstructured allow any kind of properties and child nodes.

Why a custom node type

The PHPCR ODM stores with every node the alias of the document the node corresponds to. Therefore it adds a property named phpcr:alias to the node. If you use a node type like nt:file that does not allow free properties the node can not be saved when there are additional properties. Since the ODM uses the information stored in the property to construct the proper class when a node is read we need to find a way to store that property with all nodes managed by the ODM.

Node type phpcr:managed

The node type phpcr:managed defines that property. When this node type is registered with the repository we can simply add that type to the node when the node is created.

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