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Note

The Symfony form component is a standalone library that can be used outside of Symfony2 projects. For more information, see the Symfony2 Form Component on Github.

Building the Form¶

Now that you've created a Task class, the next step is to create and render the actual HTML form. In Symfony2, this is done by building a form object and then rendering it in a template. For now, this can all be done from inside a controller:

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// src/Acme/TaskBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
namespace Acme\TaskBundle\Controller;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\Controller;
use Acme\TaskBundle\Entity\Task;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

class DefaultController extends Controller
{
    public function newAction(Request $request)
    {
        // create a task and give it some dummy data for this example
        $task = new Task();
        $task->setTask('Write a blog post');
        $task->setDueDate(new \DateTime('tomorrow'));

        $form = $this->createFormBuilder($task)
            ->add('task', 'text')
            ->add('dueDate', 'date')
            ->getForm();

        return $this->render('AcmeTaskBundle:Default:new.html.twig', array(
            'form' => $form->createView(),
        ));
    }
}

Creating a form requires relatively little code because Symfony2 form objects are built with a "form builder". The form builder's purpose is to allow you to write simple form "recipes", and have it do all the heavy-lifting of actually building the form.

In this example, you've added two fields to your form - task and dueDate - corresponding to the task and dueDate properties of the Task class. You've also assigned each a "type" (e.g. text, date), which, among other things, determines which HTML form tag(s) is rendered for that field.

Symfony2 comes with many built-in types that will be discussed shortly (see Built-in Field Types).

Rendering the Form¶

Now that the form has been created, the next step is to render it. This is done by passing a special form "view" object to your template (notice the $form->createView() in the controller above) and using a set of form helper functions:

That's it! By printing form_widget(form), each field in the form is rendered, along with a label and error message (if there is one). As easy as this is, it's not very flexible (yet). Usually, you'll want to render each form field individually so you can control how the form looks. You'll learn how to do that in the "Rendering a Form in a Template" section.

Before moving on, notice how the rendered task input field has the value of the task property from the $task object (i.e. "Write a blog post"). This is the first job of a form: to take data from an object and translate it into a format that's suitable for being rendered in an HTML form.

Handling Form Submissions¶

The second job of a form is to translate user-submitted data back to the properties of an object. To make this happen, the submitted data from the user must be bound to the form. Add the following functionality to your controller:

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// ...
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

public function newAction(Request $request)
{
    // just setup a fresh $task object (remove the dummy data)
    $task = new Task();

    $form = $this->createFormBuilder($task)
        ->add('task', 'text')
        ->add('dueDate', 'date')
        ->getForm();

    if ($request->isMethod('POST')) {
        $form->bind($request);

        if ($form->isValid()) {
            // perform some action, such as saving the task to the database

            return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('task_success'));
        }
    }

    // ...
}

New in version 2.1: The bind method was made more flexible in Symfony 2.1. It now accepts the raw client data (same as before) or a Symfony Request object. This is preferred over the deprecated bindRequest method.

Now, when submitting the form, the controller binds the submitted data to the form, which translates that data back to the task and dueDate properties of the $task object. This all happens via the bind() method.

This controller follows a common pattern for handling forms, and has three possible paths:

1. When initially loading the page in a browser, the request method is GET and the form is simply created and rendered;
2. When the user submits the form (i.e. the method is POST) with invalid data (validation is covered in the next section), the form is bound and then rendered, this time displaying all validation errors;
3. When the user submits the form with valid data, the form is bound and you have the opportunity to perform some actions using the $task object (e.g. persisting it to the database) before redirecting the user to some other page (e.g. a "thank you" or "success" page).

• YAML

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  # Acme/TaskBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml Acme\TaskBundle\Entity\Task: properties: task: - NotBlank: ~ dueDate: - NotBlank: ~ - Type: \DateTime

• Annotations

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  // Acme/TaskBundle/Entity/Task.php use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert; class Task { /** * @Assert\NotBlank() */ public $task; /** * @Assert\NotBlank() * @Assert\Type("\DateTime") */ protected $dueDate; }

• XML

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  <!-- Acme/TaskBundle/Resources/config/validation.xml --> <class name="Acme\TaskBundle\Entity\Task"> <property name="task"> <constraint name="NotBlank" /> </property> <property name="dueDate"> <constraint name="NotBlank" /> <constraint name="Type">\DateTime</constraint> </property> </class>

• PHP

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  // Acme/TaskBundle/Entity/Task.php use Symfony\Component\Validator\Mapping\ClassMetadata; use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\NotBlank; use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Type; class Task { // ... public static function loadValidatorMetadata(ClassMetadata $metadata) { $metadata->addPropertyConstraint('task', new NotBlank()); $metadata->addPropertyConstraint('dueDate', new NotBlank()); $metadata->addPropertyConstraint('dueDate', new Type('\DateTime'));