I have a permissions table which has two fields, page and action.  I
don't want duplicate permission entries but that's what I'm getting
since Doctrine wants an auto increment id field.  How do you handle
this kind of thing?

I would really like to setup something like a singleton where I create
a new permission object and when I save, if an entry with the same
page and action already exists, it returns that entry, otherwise it
creates a new entry and returns it.

$permission = new Permission();
$permission->page = 'accounts';
$permission->action='create';
$permission->save(); //permission id = 3

$permission = new Permission();
$permission->page = 'accounts';
$permission->action='delete';
$permission->save();//permission id = 4

$permission = new Permission();
$permission->page = 'accounts';
$permission->action='create';
$permission->save();//permission id = 3

I would like to implement this in a way that will allow me to use
something like $permission->merge($_POST).  Does this imply overriding
save?

I appreciate any suggestions.  Thanks in advance.

Matt