Injecting SecurityContext into a Listener prePersist or preUpdate in Symfony2 to get User in a createdBy or updatedBy Causes Circular Reference Error

I setup a listener class where i'll set the ownerid column on any doctrine prePersist. My services.yml file looks like this ...

services:
my.listener:
    class: App\SharedBundle\Listener\EntityListener
    arguments: ["@security.context"]
    tags:
        - { name: doctrine.event_listener, event: prePersist }

and my class looks like this ...

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\SecurityContextInterface;

class EntityListener
{

protected $securityContext;

public function __construct(SecurityContextInterface $securityContext)
{
    $this->securityContext = $securityContext;
}


/**
 *
 * @param LifecycleEventArgs $args 
 */
public function prePersist(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
{

    $entity = $args->getEntity();
    $entityManager = $args->getEntityManager();

    $entity->setCreatedby();

}
}

The result of this is the following error.

ServiceCircularReferenceException: Circular reference detected for service "doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager", path: "doctrine.orm.default_entity_manager -> doctrine.dbal.default_connection -> my.listener -> security.context -> security.authentication.manager -> fos_user.user_manager".

My assumption is that the security context has already been injected somewhere in the chain but I don't know how to access it. Any ideas?

I had similar problems and the only workaround was to pass the whole container in the constructor (arguments: ['@service_container']).

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;

class MyListener
{
    protected $container;

    public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    // ...

    public function prePersist(LifeCycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $securityContext = $this->container->get('security.context');

        // ...
    }
}

As of Symfony 2.6 this issue should be fixed. A pull request has just been accepted into the master. Your problem is described in here. https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/11690

As of Symfony 2.6, you can inject the security.token_storage into your listener. This service will contain the token as used by the SecurityContext in <=2.5. In 3.0 this service will replace the SecurityContext::getToken() altogether. You can see a basic change list here: http://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-2-6-security-component-improvements#deprecated-the-security-context-service

Example usage in 2.6:

Your configuration:

services:
    my.entityListener:
        class: App\SharedBundle\Listener\EntityListener
        arguments:
            - "@security.token_storage"
        tags:
            - { name: doctrine.event_listener, event: prePersist }

Your Listener

namespace App\SharedBundle\Listener;

use Doctrine\ORM\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Authentication\Token\Storage\TokenStorageInterface;

class EntityListener
{
    private $token_storage;

    public function __construct(TokenStorageInterface $token_storage)
    {
        $this->token_storage = $token_storage;
    }

    public function prePersist(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
    {
        $entity = $args->getEntity();
        $entity->setCreatedBy($this->token_storage->getToken()->getUsername());
    }
}

For a nice created_by example, you can use https://github.com/hostnet/entity-blamable-component/blob/master/src/Listener/BlamableListener.php for inspiration. It uses the hostnet/entity-tracker-component which provides a special event that is fired when an entity is changed during your request. There's also a bundle to configure this in Symfony2

• https://github.com/hostnet/entity-tracker-component
• https://github.com/hostnet/entity-tracker-bundle

There's a great answer already in this thread but everything changes. Now there're entity listeners classes in Doctrine: http://docs.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/latest/reference/events.html#entity-listeners-class

So you can add an annotation to your entity like:

/**
 * @ORM\EntityListeners({"App\Entity\Listener\PhotoListener"})
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="App\Repository\PhotoRepository")
 */
class Photo 
{
    // Entity code here...
}

And create a class like this:

class PhotoListener
{        
    private $container;

    function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    /** @ORM\PreRemove() */
    public function preRemoveHandler(Photo $photo, LifecycleEventArgs $event): void
    {
         // Some code here...
    }
}

Also you should define this listener in services.yml like that:

photo_listener:
  class: App\Entity\Listener\PhotoListener
  public: false
  autowire: true
  tags:
    - {name: doctrine.orm.entity_listener}