orphanRemoval: true in Doctrine

Suppose you have a User entity with an articles relation like so:

#[ORM\OneToMany(
    mappedBy: 'user',
    targetEntity: User::class,
    orphanRemoval: true,
    cascade: ['persist']
)]
private Collection $articles;

The orphanRemoval: true option tells Doctrine that whenever you remove an Article record from the User->articles collection, it should also delete the “orphaned” Article record from the database.

In other words, if you do something like:

// We make the $article record an "orphan" here
$user->getArticles()->removeElement($article);

$entityManager->flush();

Then, when Doctrine calls the EntityManager::flush() method, it’ll also delete the orphaned $article record from the DB with a DELETE SQL statement.