Stop copying Symfony docs – learn anemic vs rich models first

Bohdan Pastukh

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3 days ago

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Symfony documentation teaches you an Anemic Model design. Imagine a simple User entity:

class User
{
    private int $id;
    private string $username;
}

Now the manager asks to add contact fields:

class User
{
    private int $id;
    private string $username;
    private string $contactType;
    private string $contact;

    public function setContactType(string $contactType): void
    {
        $this->contactType = $contactType;
    }

    public function setContact(string $contact): void
    {
        $this->contact = $contact;
    }
}

Then you create a service to change contact data:

class ContactDataService
{
    public function changeContactData(string $contactType, string $contact): void
    {
        if ($contactType === 'email' && !$this->isValidEmail($contact)) {
            throw new InvalidEmailException($contact);
        }

        $user = // retrieve user;
        $user->setContact($contact);
        $user->setContactType($contactType);
    }

    private function isValidEmail(string $email): bool
    {
        return filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) !== false;
    }
}

Looks familiar? This is the kind of design often shown in Symfony documentation and tutorials.

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