What is the recommended way to create entities and allow for incoming data

Hi everyone,

I just set Oro this past weekend and have been combing through the docs.

I’m looking for some recommendations on how to proceed with getting up and running after the install.

Some background: In my organization, we organize conference and festival events. Speakers and press typically fill out a web form requesting access to an event, and attendees buy tickets.

It would be great to track all of this in a database and it seems doable in Oro if I add a few custom entities: events, speakers, attendees, and press.

My first question is:
What is the recommended way to add custom entities?
There appear to be two ways: Using the admin interface or using Symfony bundles.

My second question is:
What is the recommended way to use web forms to populate entities other than “Contact Requests?”
I read through this section in the docs: “http://oroinc.com/orocrm/doc/current/user-guide/emb-forms” and I am wondering if it possible to use the admin interface to create an entity called “speaker submissions” that has a “form type” for a “speaker submission form.”

I would really appreciate some feedback / direction here.

Thanks,

Mike

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[RodolfoParticipant]

Hello @michaelgold,

I can share with you some of my experience. As you said, you can create entities in two ways:

Question 1:

1) Using the Oro Entity Manager. With some clicks you set up your entity with all fields and oro creates automatically the pages with datagrid, export feature (.csv), filters, and so on. I believe this option could be use for simple entities. You have to keep in mind that creating entities using this feature sometimes you’ll be limited.

2) As you said, you can create a bundle and set up entities using the “Symfony way”. Actually you will figure out that there is some differences and details that makes Oro a bit different. Some details that you can easily discover looking on some bundles for example on: NoteBundle. I would use this option if you know that you will need some custom features in the future and I believe this is your case. To create it you will create migrations scripts.

So, in my point of view, if you need something fast, just go with entity manager. In minutes you have your entity. If you need something more robust for example entities with restful api methods, features like import data and create synchronization, go on option two.

Question 2:
Yes, In this case you can create the entity using Entity Manager. But unfortunately it’s not possible to create the Embedded form dynamically. So, you have two options to save data into your entity.

1) Create the form using these instructions from EmbeddedFormBundle.

2) Create your own webform using an external php code, connecting and saving directly on your database. All entities created using Entity Manager will be on your database with the name: oro_ext_<YOUR_ENTITY_NAME>

I hope these information can help you.
Good luck!

[Author]

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