Should generate a string when is previously setted?

[terox]

Hello!

I am having some issue with the generate annotation. I am not sure that is a normal behaviour.

When we have a new entity (not persisted) and I set manually a field with generate annotation, it is automatically replaced with generator value when it is persisted by Doctrine.

I am not sure, but I think that setted value should have more priority than autogenerated value. There are some edge cases than that fields are manully fillable or autogenerated.

What do you think?

Thank you

[Brunty]

Hey @terox!

I can see the case for that, there's a couple of options for how we could implement this here:

1. If the field / property has a value already: don't generate one when it's persisted (as an automatic thing, check the value before generating it)
2. Add an option to the annotation specifying that it should only be generated if the field / property is empty

The first feels a bit like hidden functionality, whereas the second is a bit more explicit and obvious, that's my preference but I'm open to suggestions & discussion :)

[terox]

Hello @Brunty. I agree with your conclusion.

I like the option two because is more explicit (I like explicit configuration values to avoid confusions) but by other hand I think if there are any previosly value, this should be maintained maybe because is a relevant value (I thought that this works like this). In that case, I think that if option is disabled we should throw an exception in case that is violated. To be more clear: thrown an exception is override option is disabled.

;)