Hydrating Database - zend-framework2

Question

I am new to learning and understanding how Hydration works, just wanted to point that out first. I'm currently able to Hydrate Select and Insert queries without any problems.
I am currently stuck on trying to Hydrate Update queries now. In my entity I have setup the get/set options for each type of column in my database. I've found that the ObjectProperty() Hydrator works best for my situation too.
However whenever I try to update only a set number of columns and extract via the hydrator I am getting errors because all the other options are not set and are returning null values. I do not need to update everything for a particular row, just a few columns.
For example in my DB Table I may have:
name
phone_number
email_address
But I only need to update the phone_number.
$entity_passport = $this->getEntityPassport();
$entity_passport->setPrimaryPhone('5551239876');
$this->getTablePassport()->update($this->getHydrator()->extract($entity_passport), array(
'employeeid' => '1'
));
This returns an error because setName() and setEmailAddress() are not included in this update and the query returns that the values cannot be null. But clearly when you look at the DB Table, there is data already there. The data that is there does not need to be changed either, only in this example does the PrimaryPhone() number.
I've been looking and reading documentation all over the place but I cannot find anything that would explain what I am doing wrong. I should note that I am only using Zend\Db (Not Doctrine).
I'm assuming I've missed something someplace due to my lack of knowledge with this new feature I'm trying to understand.
Perhaps you don't Hydrate Update queries... I'm sort of lost / confused. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

I think you're having a fundamental misconception of hydration. A hydrator simply populates an entity object from data (hydrate) and extracts data from an entity object (extract). So there are no separate hydrators for different types of queries.
In your update example you should first retrieve the complete entity object ($entity_passport) and then pass it to the TableGateway's update method. You would retrieve the entity by employeeid, since that's the condition you're using to update. So something like this:
$entity_passport = $passportMapper->findByEmployeeId(1);
$entity_passport->setPrimaryPhone('5551239876');
$this->getTablePassport()->update($this->getHydrator()->extract($entity_passport), array(
'employeeid' => $entity_passport->getId()
));
This is assuming you have some sort of mapper layer. Otherwise you could use your passport TableGateway (I assume that's what getTablePassport() returns, no?).
Otherwise, if you think retrieving the object is too much overhead and you just want to run the query you could use just a \Zend\Db\Sql\Sql object, ie:
$sql = new \Zend\Db\Sql\Sql($dbAdapter);
$update = $sql->update('passport')
->set(array('primary_phone' => $entity_passport->getPrimaryPhone()))
->where(array('employeeid' => $employeeId));
Edit:
Maybe it was a mistake to bring up the mapper, because it may cause more confusion. You could simply use your TableGateway to retrieve the entity object and then hydrate the returned row:
$rows = $this->getTablePassport()->select(array('employeeid' => 1));
$entity_passport = $this->getHydrator($rows->current());
[...]
Edit 2:
I checked your gist and I noticed a few things, so here we go:
I see that your getTablePassport indeed does return an object which is a subclass of TableGateway. You have already set up this class for it to use a HydratingResultset. This means you don't need to do any manual hydrating when retrieving objects using the gateway.
You also already implemented a Search method in that same class, so why not just use that? However I would change that method, because right now you're using LIKE for every single column. Not only is it very inefficient, but it will also give you wrong results, for example on the id column.
If you were to fix that method then you can simply call it in the Service object:
$this->getTablePassport->Search(array('employeeid' => 1));
Otherwise you could just implement a separate method in that tablegateway class, such as
public function findByEmployeeId($employeeId)
{
return $tableGateway->select(array('employeeid' => $employeeId));
}
This should already return an array of entities (or one in this specific case). P.S. make sure to debug and check what is actually being returned when you retrieve the entity. So print_r the entity you get back from the PassportTable before trying the update. You first have to make sure the retrieval code works well.