Symfony MongoDB Integration

Why Use MongoDB in a Symfony Application?

By using MongoDB as a data store in a Symfony web application, you can leverage the document data model to build rich query expressions, allowing you to easily interact with data. You can also customize your connections to persist and access data to and from multiple databases and collections.

In your applications, you can implement the Doctrine MongoDB ODM, which is an Object-Document Mapper (ODM) for MongoDB and PHP. It provides a way to work with MongoDB in Symfony, using the same principles as Doctrine ORM for relational databases.

Doctrine ODM allows you to map PHP objects to MongoDB documents and query MongoDB by using a builder API. This mapping enables you to use other MongoDB features such as flexible schema design and advanced searches. To learn more about this library, see the Resources section.

Prerequisites

To create the Quick Start application, you need the following software installed in your development environment:

• PHP

• Composer

• Symfony CLI

• A terminal app and shell. For MacOS users, use Terminal or a similar app. For Windows users, use PowerShell.

Create a MongoDB Atlas Cluster

You must create a MongoDB cluster where you can store and manage your data. Complete the Get Started with Atlas guide to set up a new Atlas account and create a free tier MongoDB cluster. This tutorial also demonstrates how to load sample datasets into your cluster, including the data that is used in this tutorial.

You provide instructions to the driver on where and how to connect to your MongoDB cluster by providing it with a connection string. To retrieve your connection string, follow the instructions in the Connect to Your Cluster tutorial in the Atlas documentation.

Install MongoDB Extension

To learn more about installing the MongoDB extension, see Installing the Extension in the PHP Library Manual.

Initialize a Symfony Project

Run the following command to create a skeleton Symfony project called restaurants:

composer create-project symfony/skeleton restaurants

Install PHP Driver and Doctrine ODM

Enter your project directory, then add the MongoDB PHP driver and the Doctrine ODM bundle to your application. The bundle integrates the ODM library into Symfony so that you can read from and write objects to MongoDB. Installing the bundle also automatically adds the driver to your project. To learn more, see the Resources section of this guide.

Run the following commands to install the ODM:

composer require doctrine/mongodb-odm-bundle

Do you want to execute this recipe?

To ensure that Doctrine ODM is enabled in your project, verify that your config/bundles.php file contains the highlighted entry in the following code:

return [
    // ...
    Doctrine\Bundle\MongoDBBundle\DoctrineMongoDBBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

doctrine_mongodb:
  auto_generate_proxy_classes: true
  auto_generate_hydrator_classes: true
  connections:
    default:
      server: "%env(resolve:MONGODB_URL)%"
  default_database: "%env(resolve:MONGODB_DB)%"
  document_managers:
    default:
      auto_mapping: true
      mappings:
        App:
          dir: "%kernel.project_dir%/src/Document"
          mapping: true
          type: attribute
          prefix: 'App\Document'
          is_bundle: false
          alias: App

Install Frontend Dependency

This project uses twig, the default template engine for Symfony, to generate templates in this application. Run the following command to install the twig bundle:

composer require symfony/twig-bundle

Modify Project Files

This section demonstrates how to modify the files in your restaurants project to create a Symfony web application that displays restaurants that match the specified criteria.

...
MONGODB_URL=<your Atlas connection string>
MONGODB_DB=sample_restaurants

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
namespace App\Document;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
use Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection;
use Doctrine\ODM\MongoDB\Mapping\Annotations as ODM;
#[ODM\Document(collection: 'restaurants')]
class Restaurant
{
    #[ODM\Id]
    public ?string $id = null;
    #[ODM\Field]
    public string $name;
    #[ODM\Field]
    public string $borough;
    #[ODM\Field]
    public string $cuisine;
}

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
namespace App\Controller;
use App\Document\Restaurant;
use Doctrine\ODM\MongoDB\DocumentManager;
use MongoDB\BSON\Regex;
use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Annotation\Route;
class RestaurantController extends AbstractController
{
    private DocumentManager $dm;
    private LoggerInterface $logger;
    public function __construct(DocumentManager $dm, LoggerInterface $logger)
    {
        $this->dm = $dm;
        $this->logger = $logger;
    }
    #[Route('/', name: 'restaurant_index', methods: ['GET'])]
    public function index(Request $request): Response
    {   
        return $this->render('restaurant/index.html.twig');
    }
    #[Route('/restaurant/browse', name: 'restaurant_browse', methods: ['GET'])]
    public function browse(Request $request): Response
    {
        $restaurantRepository = $this->dm->getRepository(Restaurant::class);
        $queryBuilder = $restaurantRepository->createQueryBuilder();
        $restaurants = $queryBuilder
                ->field('borough')->equals('Queens')
                ->field('name')->equals(new Regex('Moon', 'i'))
                ->getQuery()
                ->execute();
        return $this->render('restaurant/browse.html.twig', ['restaurants' => $restaurants]);
    }
}

{# templates/restaurant/index.html.twig #}
{% extends 'base.html.twig' %}
{% block body %}
    <h1>Welcome to the Symfony MongoDB Quickstart!</h1>
{% endblock %}

{# templates/restaurant/browse.html.twig #}
   
{% extends 'base.html.twig' %}
{% block title %}
    Search Restaurants
{% endblock %}
{% block body %}
    <h1>Search Restaurants</h1>
        {% for restaurant in restaurants %}
            <p>
                <span style="color:deeppink;"><b>Name: </b>{{ restaurant.name }}</span><br>
                <b>Borough:</b> {{ restaurant.borough }}<br>
                <b>Cuisine:</b> {{ restaurant.cuisine }}<br>
            </p>
        {% endfor %}
{% endblock %}

Start your Symfony Application

Run the following command from the application root directory to start your PHP built-in web server:

symfony server:start

After the server starts, it outputs the following message:

[OK] Web server listening
     The Web server is using PHP FPM 8.3.4
     http://127.0.0.1:8000

Open the URL http://127.0.0.1:8000/restaurant/browse in your web browser. The page shows a list of restaurants and details about each of them, as displayed in the following screenshot:

Congratulations on completing the Quick Start tutorial!

After you complete these steps, you have a Symfony web application that connects to your MongoDB deployment, runs a query on the sample data, and renders a retrieved result.