Symfony Doctrine : Use real tablename in request - sql

Question

I'm using doctrine in a symfony project and I have a little problem.
I have a "Character" entity, and a "Equipment" entity.
The character can only wear 5 equipment on him.
But he could buy some other equipment, to put in his inventory. This way, he can switch one of his equipment for another one in his inventory.
So, in my "Character" entity I have :
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="rs\WelcomeBundle\Entity\Equipment", cascade={"persist"})
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="InventoryCharacter")
*/
private $inventory;
/**
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="rs\WelcomeBundle\Entity\Equipment", cascade={"persist"})
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="EquipmentWearCharacter")
*/
private $equipementsWear;
The problem is : I want to get the list of equipment that the character don't already buy.
In fact I want to get the list of equipment that are in the complete list (findAll in equipment) but NOT IN the list of character inventory.
I try to do a request but doctrine doesn't know the table "InventoryCharacter" because there is no corresponding entity class...
So I can't do "Select p from InventoryCharacter..."
How I can do ? I want to specify to search in the real database, not in the list of entity class...

Answer 1

The 'ManyToMany' relationship with Doctrine is very transparent. You can not do anything more than getting entity list for the one or the other.
If you ever find yourself needing to access the 'Relation' table, either to add extra data about the relation (e.g. time created) or to apply a filter (e.g. recently created), you need to create that relationship entity yourself. i.e. CharacterInventory. and set up OneToMany and ManyToOne relationships between the 3 entities.
Hope this help.
+++++++++++Edited+++++++++++
If you simply want to retrieve all equipments user can purchase (i.e. not purchased yet), you actually dont need to create the middle entity CharacterInventory:
/**
* Add this to the Equipment Entity
*
* #ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="rs\WelcomeBundle\Entity\Character", cascade={"persist"})
* #ORM\JoinTable(name="InventoryCharacter")
*/
private $characters;
Then you can use this to query what you want:
$dql = "SELECT s FROM rs\WelcomeBundle\Entity\Equipment s LEFT JOIN s.characters ct WHERE ct != :character";
$found = $em->createQuery($dql)
->setParameter('character', $characterEntityObject)
->getResult();