Yeah this was a while ago – it seems the example you’ve written comes in from a plausible angle and is somewhat similar to the direction I’ve taken here:

http://www.rvdavid.net/my-zend-framework-model-layer-part-service-part-orm/

Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it greatly.

bases on the OOP rule called ‘Single Responsibility Principle’ (http://giorgiosironi.blogspot.com/2009/09/solid-part-1-single-responsibility.html)
) I would recommend to create UpdateService service and keep it separate from the UserService, because that import can have various source and could also write to different Entities.

That UpdateService could have following features:
*) read from various sources based on provided adapter (csv, xls, SOAP etc) http://giorgiosironi.blogspot.com/2010/01/practical-php-patterns-adapter.html
*) write to various Entities that can be just injected through some generic setOptions() or reflection (etc…)

The above would keep the UserService thin and move this additional functionality into another class,
that can handle this functionality well and is not coupled only to User.

Some example:

$fileCsv = $form->getUploadedFileContent();

$adapter = new CsvAdapter($fileCsv);

$updateHandler = new UpdateService($adapter);
$userService = new UserService();

$updateHandler->updateEntities($userService);

class UpdateService {

///

public function updateEntities(BusinessService $service) {

foreach ($this->getAdapter()->getRows() as $row) {
$entity = $Service->findById($row->getId());

// This can be done various ways and even can be some checking included.
$entity->loadFromArray($row->toArray());

$service->save($entity);
}

}
}

PS: thanks giorgio for all his blogs