Basics

This package uses the Laravel database configuration and thus it works right out of the box. With the Entity Manager facade (or service locator) you can interact with repositories. It might be wise to check out the Doctrine 2 docs to know how it works. The little example below shows how to use the EntityManager in it simplest form.

<?php

$user = new User;
$user->setName('Mitchell');

EntityManager::persist($user);
EntityManager::flush();

The User used in the example above looks like this.

<?php

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping AS ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="users")
 */
class User
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string")
     */
    private $name;

    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->id;
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    public function setName($name)
    {
        $this->name = $name;
    }
}

If you've only used Eloquent and its models this might look bloated or frightening, but it's actually very simple. Let me break the class down.

<?php

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping AS ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="users")
 */
class User
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string")
     */
    private $name;
}

The only thing that's actually important in this entity are the properties. This shows you which data the entity holds.

With Doctrine 2 you can't interact with database by using the entity User. You'll have to use Entity Manager and repositories. This does create less overhead since your entities aren't extending the whole Eloquent model class. Which can dramatically slow down your application a lot if you're working with thousands or millions of records.