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Transactions

A Doctrine\DBAL\Connection provides an API for transaction management, with the methods beginTransaction(), commit() and rollBack().

Transaction demarcation with the Doctrine DBAL looks as follows:

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$conn->beginTransaction();
try{
    // do stuff
    $conn->commit();
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $conn->rollBack();
    throw $e;
}
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Alternatively, the control abstraction Connection#transactional($func) can be used to make the code more concise and to make sure you never forget to rollback the transaction in the case of an exception. The following code snippet is functionally equivalent to the previous one:

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$conn->transactional(function(Connection $conn): void {
    // do stuff
});
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Note that the closure above doesn't have to be a void, anything it returns will be returned by transactional():

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$one = $conn->transactional(function(Connection $conn): int {
    // do stuff
    return $conn->fetchOne('SELECT 1');
});
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The Doctrine\DBAL\Connection class also has methods to control the transaction isolation level as supported by the underlying database. Connection#setTransactionIsolation($level) and Connection#getTransactionIsolation() can be used for that purpose. The possible isolation levels are represented by the following constants:

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TransactionIsolationLevel::READ_UNCOMMITTED
TransactionIsolationLevel::READ_COMMITTED
TransactionIsolationLevel::REPEATABLE_READ
TransactionIsolationLevel::SERIALIZABLE
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The default transaction isolation level of a Doctrine\DBAL\Connection instance is chosen by the underlying platform but it is always at least READ_COMMITTED.

Transaction Nesting

Calling beginTransaction() while already in a transaction will result in two very different behaviors depending on whether transaction nesting with savepoints is enabled or not. In both cases though, there won't be an actual transaction inside a transaction, even if your RDBMS supports it. There is always only a single, real database transaction.

By default, transaction nesting at the SQL level with savepoints is disabled. The value for that setting can be set on a per-connection basis, with Doctrine\DBAL\Connection#setNestTransactionsWithSavepoints().

Nesting transactions without savepoints is deprecated, but is the default behavior for backward compatibility reasons.

Dummy mode

This behavior is deprecated, avoid it with Doctrine\DBAL\Connection#setNestTransactionsWithSavepoints(true).

When transaction nesting with savepoints is disabled, what happens is not so much transaction nesting as propagating transaction control up the call stack. For that purpose, the Connection class keeps an internal counter that represents the nesting level and is increased/decreased as beginTransaction(), commit() and rollBack() are invoked. beginTransaction() increases the nesting level whilst commit() and rollBack() decrease the nesting level. The nesting level starts at 0. Whenever the nesting level transitions from 0 to 1, beginTransaction() is invoked on the underlying driver connection and whenever the nesting level transitions from 1 to 0, commit() or rollBack() is invoked on the underlying driver, depending on whether the transition was caused by Connection#commit() or Connection#rollBack().

What this means is that transaction control is basically passed to code higher up in the call stack and the inner transaction block does not actually result in an SQL transaction. It is not ignored either though.

To visualize what this means in practice, consider the following example:

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// $conn instanceof Doctrine\DBAL\Connection
$conn->beginTransaction(); // 0 => 1, "real" transaction started
try {

    ...

    // nested transaction block, this might be in some other API/library code that is
    // unaware of the outer transaction.
    $conn->beginTransaction(); // 1 => 2
    try {
        ...

        $conn->commit(); // 2 => 1
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        $conn->rollBack(); // 2 => 1, transaction marked for rollback only
        throw $e;
    }

    ...

    $conn->commit(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction committed
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $conn->rollBack(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction rollback
    throw $e;
}
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However, a rollback in a nested transaction block will always mark the current transaction so that the only possible outcome of the transaction is to be rolled back. That means in the above example, the rollback in the inner transaction block marks the whole transaction for rollback only. Even if the nested transaction block would not rethrow the exception, the transaction is marked for rollback only and the commit of the outer transaction would trigger an exception, leading to the final rollback. This also means that you cannot successfully commit some changes in an outer transaction if an inner transaction block fails and issues a rollback, even if this would be the desired behavior (i.e. because the nested operation is "optional" for the purpose of the outer transaction block). To achieve that, you need to resort to transaction nesting with savepoint.

All that is guaranteed to the inner transaction is that it still happens atomically, all or nothing, the transaction just gets a wider scope and the control is handed to the outer scope.

The transaction nesting described here is a debated feature that has its critics. Form your own opinion. We recommend avoiding nesting transaction blocks when possible, and most of the time, it is possible. Transaction control should mostly be left to a service layer and not be handled in data access objects or similar.

Directly invoking PDO::beginTransaction(), PDO::commit() or PDO::rollBack() or the corresponding methods on the particular Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\Connection instance bypasses the transparent transaction nesting that is provided by Doctrine\DBAL\Connection and can therefore corrupt the nesting level, causing errors with broken transaction boundaries that may be hard to debug.

Emulated Transaction Nesting with Savepoints

Let's now examine what happens when transaction nesting with savepoints is enabled, with the same example as above

1 <?php
// $conn instanceof Doctrine\DBAL\Connection
$conn->beginTransaction(); // 0 => 1, "real" transaction started
try {

    ...

    // nested transaction block, this might be in some other API/library code that is
    // unaware of the outer transaction.
    $conn->beginTransaction(); // 1 => 2, savepoint created
    try {
        ...

        $conn->commit(); // 2 => 1
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        $conn->rollBack(); // 2 => 1, rollback to savepoint
        throw $e;
    }

    ...

    $conn->commit(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction committed
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $conn->rollBack(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction rollback
    throw $e;
}
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This time, everything is handled at the SQL level: the main transaction is not marked for rollback only, but the inner emulated transaction is rolled back to the savepoint.

Auto-commit mode

A Doctrine\DBAL\Connection supports setting the auto-commit mode to control whether queries should be automatically wrapped into a transaction or directly be committed to the database. By default a connection runs in auto-commit mode which means that it is non-transactional unless you start a transaction explicitly via beginTransaction(). To have a connection automatically open up a new transaction on connect() and after commit() or rollBack(), you can disable auto-commit mode with setAutoCommit(false).

1 <?php
// define connection parameters $params and initialize driver $driver

$conn = new \Doctrine\DBAL\Connection($params, $driver);

$conn->setAutoCommit(false); // disables auto-commit
$conn->connect(); // connects and immediately starts a new transaction

try {
    // do stuff
    $conn->commit(); // commits transaction and immediately starts a new one
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back transaction and immediately starts a new one
}

// still transactional
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Changing auto-commit mode during an active transaction, implicitly commits active transactions for that particular connection.

1 <?php
// define connection parameters $params and initialize driver $driver

$conn = new \Doctrine\DBAL\Connection($params, $driver);

// we are in auto-commit mode
$conn->beginTransaction();

// disable auto-commit, commits currently active transaction
$conn->setAutoCommit(false); // also causes a new transaction to be started

// no-op as auto-commit is already disabled
$conn->setAutoCommit(false);

// enable auto-commit again, commits currently active transaction
$conn->setAutoCommit(true); // does not start a new transaction automatically
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Committing or rolling back an active transaction will of course only open up a new transaction automatically if the particular action causes the transaction context of a connection to terminate. That means committing or rolling back nested transactions are not affected by this behaviour.

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// we are not in auto-commit mode, transaction is active

try {
    // do stuff

    $conn->beginTransaction(); // start inner transaction, nesting level 2

    try {
        // do stuff
        $conn->commit(); // commits inner transaction, does not start a new one
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back inner transaction, does not start a new one
    }

    // do stuff

    $conn->commit(); // commits outer transaction, and immediately starts a new one
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back outer transaction, and immediately starts a new one
}
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To initialize a Doctrine\DBAL\Connection with auto-commit disabled, you can also use the Doctrine\DBAL\Configuration container to modify the default auto-commit mode via Doctrine\DBAL\Configuration::setAutoCommit(false) and pass it to a Doctrine\DBAL\Connection when instantiating.

Error handling

In order to handle errors related to deadlocks or lock wait timeouts, you can use Doctrine built-in transaction exceptions. All transaction exceptions where retrying makes sense have a marker interface: Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\RetryableException. A practical example is as follows:

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try {
    // process stuff
} catch (\Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\RetryableException $e) {
    // retry the processing
}
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If you need stricter control, you can catch the concrete exceptions directly:

Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\DeadlockException: this can happen when each member of a group of actions is waiting for some other member to release a shared lock.
Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\LockWaitTimeoutException: this exception happens when a transaction has to wait a considerable amount of time to obtain a lock, even if a deadlock is not involved.

1	<?php $conn->beginTransaction(); try{ // do stuff $conn->commit(); } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); throw $e; }
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1	<?php $conn->transactional(function(Connection $conn): void { // do stuff });
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1	<?php $one = $conn->transactional(function(Connection $conn): int { // do stuff return $conn->fetchOne('SELECT 1'); });
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1	<?php TransactionIsolationLevel::READ_UNCOMMITTED TransactionIsolationLevel::READ_COMMITTED TransactionIsolationLevel::REPEATABLE_READ TransactionIsolationLevel::SERIALIZABLE
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1	<?php // $conn instanceof Doctrine\DBAL\Connection $conn->beginTransaction(); // 0 => 1, "real" transaction started try { ... // nested transaction block, this might be in some other API/library code that is // unaware of the outer transaction. $conn->beginTransaction(); // 1 => 2 try { ... $conn->commit(); // 2 => 1 } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); // 2 => 1, transaction marked for rollback only throw $e; } ... $conn->commit(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction committed } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); // 1 => 0, "real" transaction rollback throw $e; }
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1	<?php // define connection parameters $params and initialize driver $driver $conn = new \Doctrine\DBAL\Connection($params, $driver); $conn->setAutoCommit(false); // disables auto-commit $conn->connect(); // connects and immediately starts a new transaction try { // do stuff $conn->commit(); // commits transaction and immediately starts a new one } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back transaction and immediately starts a new one } // still transactional
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1	<?php // we are not in auto-commit mode, transaction is active try { // do stuff $conn->beginTransaction(); // start inner transaction, nesting level 2 try { // do stuff $conn->commit(); // commits inner transaction, does not start a new one } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back inner transaction, does not start a new one } // do stuff $conn->commit(); // commits outer transaction, and immediately starts a new one } catch (\Exception $e) { $conn->rollBack(); // rolls back outer transaction, and immediately starts a new one }
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1	<?php try { // process stuff } catch (\Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\RetryableException $e) { // retry the processing }
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Maintained

Unmaintained