API Platform & Symfony: what is the correct way to make a custom controller for collection operations? - api

Question

As far as I understand, Api Platform deletes and updates one by one the resources of a Collection. For example, I have an Activity Entity, which has a Many-To-One relation with OpeningHours: if I want to delete or add multiples OpeningHours through an Admin Back Office, I must call a "delete" operation for each openingHour with its unique #id. As long as I have very few OpeningHours, it's quite all right : the job is done in a few seconds. But what am I supposed to do when I have thousand of them ? Just wait ?
So I've created a Custom Controller and a Custom Route - so far only for the Delete Operation ; the update operation will come after.
First Question : is this the right way to do it or have I missed something in the docs?
Here is my API configuration for the Activity Entity:
/**
* #ApiResource(
* collectionOperations={
* "get"={"normalization_context"={"groups"="activity:list"}},
* "post"={"denormalization_context"={"groups"="activity:post"}},
* },
* itemOperations={
* "get"={"normalization_context"={"groups"="activity:item"}},
* "put"={"denormalization_context"={"groups"="activity:item"}},
"delete_opening_hours"={
* "method"="DELETE",
* "path"="/admin/activity/{id}/delete_opening_hours",
* "controller"=DeleteOpeningHoursAction::class,
* "read"=false,
* },
* "delete", "patch"
* },
* attributes={"pagination_items_per_page"=10}
* )
And my Custom Controller :
/**
* Class DeleteOpeningHoursAction
* #Security("is_granted('ROLE_ADMIN')")
*/
final class DeleteOpeningHoursAction extends AbstractController
{
/**
* #Route(
* name="delete_opening_hours",
* path="/admin/activity/{id}/delete_opening_hours",
* methods={"DELETE"},
* )
*/
public function deleteHours(Activity $data):Activity
{
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$activity = $em->getRepository('App\Entity\Activity')->find($data);
$openingHours = $activity->getOpeningHours();
foreach ($openingHours as $hour) {
$em->remove($hour);
}
$em->flush();
$response = new Response();
$response->setStatusCode(204);
return $response;
}
}
It does the requested job: all the OpeningHours are deleted at once, but it returns a 500 Error:
Return value of App\Controller\Action\DeleteOpeningHoursAction::deleteHours() must be an instance of App\Entity\Activity, instance of Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response returned
And if I return $activity instead of the response above, the error message becomes :
Return value of App\Controller\Action\DeleteOpeningHoursAction::deleteHours() must be an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response, instance of App\Entity\Activity returned
So what am I doing wrong? What is the correct response for a Custom Controller?
I'm quite confused.
Thanks for any help.