I have a form to edit a UserProfile which is stored in mysql db. Which includes the following custom configuration:

public function configure()
  {
    $this->widgetSchema['password']=new sfWidgetFormInputPassword();
    $this->validatorSchema['password']->setOption('required', false); // you don't need to specify a new password if you are editing a user.
  }

When the user tries to save the executeUpdate method is called to commit the changes. If the password is left blank, the password field is set to '', but I want it to retain the old password instead of overwriting it.

What is the best (/most in the symfony ethos) way of doing this? My solution was to override the setter method on the model (which i had done anyway for password encryption), and ignore blank values.

public function setPassword( $password )
{
  if ($password=='') return false; // if password is blank don't save it.
  return $this->_set('password', UserProfile ::encryptPassword( $password ));
}

It seems to work fine like this, but is there a better way?

If you're wondering I cannot use sfDoctrineGuard for this project as I am dealing with a legacy database, and cannot change the schema.