Manual SQL Query from Form Type / Abstract Class - symfony-forms

Question

First of all, I am moving from Symfony 1.4 to Symfony 3. (Yes, I was kicking and screaming at first)
My Question: I am running a manual query from the following FormType class that is for a chunk of my Signup form. I am moving the Address part of the signup into its own class. I am calling a geographical table to get my states list and I have a Union... hence this is why I am not calling an entity class.
The problem is that I need to connect to the database but cannot because it's an Abstract class. If I run this in the Controller Class, no problem, but can't do it herein this Abstract class. I have a bunch of manual steps to go through before making any inserts, so I can just
How do you make the following work? I have not created any services, but if I put all of this into a controller class, then it works fine.
<?php
namespace LocationBundle\Form;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolver;
use Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\ChoiceType;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
class PartialAddressType extends AbstractType
{
private function getStatesList()
{
$sql = "
SELECT
'0' AS id
,'' AS name
,'' AS abbreviation
,'Select State' AS display
UNION
SELECT
id
,trim(name)
,trim(abbreviation)
,CONCAT(trim(abbreviation), ' - ', trim(name)) AS display
FROM
geo_state
WHERE
type = 'state'
ORDER BY abbreviation ASC; ";
$manager = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager('default');
$conn = $manager->getConnection();
$rs = $conn->query($sql)->fetchAll();
return $rs;
}
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$rs = $this->getStatesList();
// This one is for a Select
$builder->add('locationState', ChoiceType::class, array(
'expanded' => FALSE,
'multiple' => FALSE,
'choices' => $rs(),
'choice_label' => $rs['display'],
'choice_attribute' => $rs['abbreviation'],
'preferred_choices' => array('TX'),
'choices_as_values' => FALSE,
'label' => 'State',
)
);
}
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
$resolver->setDefaults(array());
}
public function getName()
{
return 'location_bundle_partial_address_type';
}
}

Answer 1

I suggest you following steps:
1) Move the query in a separate repository class (I hope you map the table as an entity)
2) Use an EntityType Field with the Custom query as described here
3) Avoid the UNION using the placeholder
Last tips, You should implements the getBlockPrefix method instead of getName as described in the migration guide here.
Hope this help