Doctrine prevent error on OneToOne association where record doesn't exist in database

Question

Problem

I'm trying to create a OneToOne association in a Laravel app using Doctrine. When trying to access the association I'm getting this error.

Entity of type 'Status' for IDs clientId(1) was not found

Versions:

Doctrine: 2.7.5

Laravel: 7.30.4

---

Code:

Client Class

 <?php

namespace App\Client;

use App\Person\Person;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * Class Client
 * @package App\Client
 *
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="ClientRepository")
 * @ORM\Table(name="client")
 */
class Client extends Person
{

    /**
     * @var Status
     *
     * @ORM\OneToOne(targetEntity="Status", mappedBy="client")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="id", referencedColumnName="client_id", nullable=true)
     */
    protected $status;


    /**
     * @return Status
     */
    public function getStatus()
    {
        return $this->status;
    }
}

Status Class:

<?php

namespace App\Client\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * Class Status
 * @package App\Client\Entity
 *
 * @ORM\Entity(readOnly=true)
 * @ORM\Table(name="status_view")
 */
class Status
{
    /**
     * @var int
     *
     * @ORM\Id()
     * @ORM\Column(name="client_id", type="integer")
     */
    protected $clientId;

    /**
     * @var \App\Client\Client
     *
     * @ORM\OneToOne(targetEntity="App\Client\Client", inversedBy="staus")
     * @ORM\JoinColumn(name="client_id", referencedColumnName="id", nullable=true)
     */
    protected $client;

    /**
     * @var string
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="status", type="string")
     */
    protected $status;
    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getStatus()
    {
        return $this->status;
    }
}

Calling Code

$client->getStatus()->getStatus()

---

What I've tried/Answers I've looked at

• Entity of type 'AppBundle\Entity\User' for IDs id(155) was not found - I'm not using a Doctrine filter, nor DQL.
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/49416542/9530790 - This works, with a few tweaks, by swallowing up the exception, but it feels more like a hack when the docs say nullable should work.
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/21887344/9530790 - This states nullable should work but it doesn't.
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/15744449/9530790 - Same question different ans. States that Doctrine doesn't support zero-to-one associations, but nullable I believe should be what solves that, but for my problem it's not working. Also there's no link to the docs stating where Zero to one is not supported.
• I believe that adding fetch="EAGER" should fix the null issue as elsewhere in our app that works, but when I add that I get an different Doctrine error spl_object_hash() expects parameter 1 to be object, null given, which again has to do with the association not existing.
• "Well why aren't you experiencing the above error with your other associations". Great question! After a deep underwater excursion into the Doctrine code, I believe the reason is because those associations are nested and for some reason (I'm not sure why), when nested, the spl_object_hash function, in class UnitOfWork is not called.

---

Additional Notes:

• This is what the object looks like when calling $client->getStatus(), before it errors on the next ->getStatus() call.

  DoctrineProxies\__CG__\App\Client\Entity\Status {#2011
       +__isInitialized__: false
       #clientId: 4
       #client: null
       #status: null
       …2
  }
  

• You can see it's a Client Proxy object that's created not a 'true' object, this is why it errors (with Entity of type 'Status' for IDs clientId(1) was not found) when not using fetch="EAGER", since eager loads a true object. See here

• This code below in the Proxy object is the what causes the above error. Which is why I can't do a try catch in the parent ('true' Client class), since it errors before calling the parent.

   /**
    * {@inheritDoc}
    */
   public function getStatus()
   {
  
       $this->__initializer__ && $this->__initializer__->__invoke($this, 'getStatus', []);
  
       return parent::getStatus();
   }
  

Question:

Why is nullable=true not working as expected, and what should/can I do to make it work?