When I retrieve an object say by

$em->find('Application\Models\User', 1);

or other methods like DQL, findBy*() cause the __construct() of the model class to run? I am having a problem where I set variables there like reference to EntityManager and I find that its not set.

I tried putting a die() in __construct() and it doesn't halt the application. Can I say that if I want to set other properties/fields like EntityManager $em I have to do it some other way? Perhaps something like

protected function getEm() {
    if (!isset($this->em)) {
        $this->em = \Zend_Registry::get('em');
    }
    return $this->em;
}