sfDoctrineGuardPlugin and custom algorithms

OK - so I have hunted around for a solution to this problem twice now and struggled to find it. So as my memory's crap, I've decided to start this blog in order to capture the solutions, hints & tips I find. (yeah, this is the first post...)

So the problem is, that when using the symfony doctrine:data-load to import new data into my app, the sf_guard_user table was not being updated with the correct algorithm. Whatever happened, the default 'sha1' algorithm was being used.

I finally realised, that my app specific settings for the alogrithm_callable option were not being called during the data-load process, even though they were within the app - this obviously caused problems when trying to log in users constructed during the build/load process from the command line.

There are two solutions: 

The hard way
The reason it's the hard way is because it relies on my memory... the solution is to add the application option to the data-load task. So instead of just calling symfony doctrine:data-load actually call

symfony doctrine:data-load --application=frontend

(replacing frontend with the correct application name of course!)

The easy way
This solution is more robust because I don't have to remember to do anything different from normal.... basically, create app.yml in the project's config directory and add the option there. This way, you don't need to remember any additional options when running data-load and if you do want a different alogrithm to be used for your backend application for example (to ensure your customers can't login to the admin section without worrying about permissions) you can override the option on an app-by-app basis.

So all is good - should solve the problem! I'm off to refactor my code :)

[UPDATE:] make sure you run

./symfony cc

to clear the cache before you try and reload the data - otherwise it won't work