Demonstration of PostLoad events not being triggered when retrieving objects by reference

Usage

This application requires an executable file bin/php that loads the correct PHP binary (as generated by our internal tool phlough on phlough install).

First, install dependencies and create a new database with the correct schema (will create an SQLite database in ./tmp)

composer install

bin/doctrine orm:schema-tool:create

Create an Entity and load it normally

bin/create-new-entity # assume it creates an entity with id 1
bin/load-entity 1 # Output should contain: PostLoad EventListener called for Entity\Test#1

Load the same entity by reference and access a property to trigger initialisation

bin/load-entity-by-reference-and-access-proprty 1 # Output will NOT contain: PostLoad EventListener called

Explanation

When loading entities by first retrieving a reference and then letting it initialise, Doctrine does not trigger PostLoad events. This happens neither if Doctrine implements the reference as a Proxy (Doctrine < 4.0 default behaviour) nor if it uses a "ghost object" (EntityManager created with $config->enableNativeLazyObjects(true);, PHP >=8.4) this has not been tested yet.

If you depend on the PostLoad event to perform some initialisation logic (e.g. loading binary data into properties), this can lead to incomplete entity objects being used.