How to add a record to an intermediate table without creating a new object?

Question

Doctrine ORM

Can you please tell me how to add an entry to an intermediate table without creating a new object in Symfony?

There is this code:

$subscriber = $em->getRepository(Subscribers::class)->findOneBy(['id' => 1);
$subscriber->addBot($bot); // $bot - это сущность
$em->persist($subscriber);
$em->flush();

And as a result, nothing will happen.
The bottom line is this: a lot of bots (a separate entity) are stored in the database, they have a connection with subscribers - many to many. and the point is that one user can belong to several bots. and when the user is first written to the database, then there is a record in the intermediate table, but if the user wrote to the second bot, then we should not enter it a second time, but should simply add the record to the intermediate table. for this purpose, I put a check on "if it exists, then we do not write it down a second time, but only make an entry in the intermediate table."

complete code

$findSubscriber = $em->getRepository(Subscribers::class)->findOneBy(['subscriber_id' => $subscriber['message']['from']['id']]);

            if(!$findSubscriber) {
                $subscribers = new Subscribers();

                $subscribers->setUsername($subscriber['message']['from']['username']);
                $subscribers->setSubscriberId($subscriber['message']['from']['id']);
                $subscribers->addBot($bot);
                $em->persist($subscribers);
                $em->flush();
                // здесь отрабатывает нормально
            }
            else {
                foreach ($bot->getSubscribers()->toArray() as $botSubscriber) {
                    if ($botSubscriber->getSubscriberId() != $subscriber['message']['from']['id']) {
                        $findSubscriber->addBot($bot);
                        $em->persist($findSubscriber);
                        $em->flush();
                        // не отрабатывает
                    }
                }
            }

Answer 1

here it is necessary to look at the classes that are in the Entity. show me what's there?