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37.

Custom Controller & Generating Admin URLs

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The final step to building our custom EasyAdmin action is to... write the controller method! In QuestionCrudController, all the way down at the bottom, this will be a normal Symfony action. You can pretend like you're writing this in a non-EasyAdmin controller class with a route above it. Say public function approve(). When the user gets here, the id of the entity will be in the URL. To help read that, autowire AdminContext $adminContext.

164 lines | src/Controller/Admin/QuestionCrudController.php
<?php
// ... lines 3 - 159
public function approve()
{
}
}

Why are we allowed to add that argument? Because first, AdminContext is a service... just like the entity manager or the router. And second, the approve() method is a completely normal Symfony controller... so we're autowiring this service just like we would do with anything else.

Get the question with $question = $adminContext->getEntity()->getInstance(). And yes, sometimes, finding the data you need in AdminContext requires a little digging. Let's add a sanity check... (mostly for my editor): if (!$question instanceof Question), throw a new \LogicException('Entity is missing or not a Question'). Now, we can very easily say $question->setIsApproved(true).

170 lines | src/Controller/Admin/QuestionCrudController.php
<?php
// ... lines 3 - 159
public function approve(AdminContext $adminContext)
{
$question = $adminContext->getEntity()->getInstance();
if (!$question instanceof Question) {
throw new \LogicException('Entity is missing or not a Question');
}
$question->setIsApproved(true);
}
}

The last step is to save this entity... which looks completely normal! Autowire EntityManagerInterface $entityManager... and then add $entityManager->flush().

172 lines | src/Controller/Admin/QuestionCrudController.php
<?php
// ... lines 3 - 159
public function approve(AdminContext $adminContext, EntityManagerInterface $entityManager)
{
$question = $adminContext->getEntity()->getInstance();
if (!$question instanceof Question) {
throw new \LogicException('Entity is missing or not a Question');
}
$question->setIsApproved(true);
$entityManager->flush();
}
}

Rendering a Template

Sweet! Ok... but... what should we do after that? Well, we could render a template. Sometimes you'll create a custom action that is literally a new page in your admin section... and you would do that by rendering a template in a completely normal way. We already have an example of that inside DashboardController. The index() method is really a regular action... where we render a template. So if you wanted to render a template in a custom action, it would look pretty much exactly like this.

Generating an Admin Url

But in our situation, we want to redirect. And, we know how to do that from inside of a controller. But hmm, I want to redirect back to the "detail" page in the admin. In order to generate a URL to somewhere inside EasyAdmin, we need a special admin URL generator service that can help add the query parameters.

Let's autowire this: AdminUrlGenerator $adminUrlGenerator. Then $targetUrl =... and build the URL by saying $adminUrlGenerator, ->setController(self::class) - because we're going to link back to ourself - ->setAction(Crud::PAGE_DETAIL), ->setEntityId($question->getId())... and then finally, ->generateUrl().

There are a number of other methods you can call on this builder... but these are the most important. At the bottom return $this->redirect($targetUrl).

181 lines | src/Controller/Admin/QuestionCrudController.php
<?php
// ... lines 3 - 22
#[IsGranted('ROLE_MODERATOR')]
class QuestionCrudController extends AbstractCrudController
{
// ... lines 26 - 161
public function approve(AdminContext $adminContext, EntityManagerInterface $entityManager, AdminUrlGenerator $adminUrlGenerator)
{
$question = $adminContext->getEntity()->getInstance();
if (!$question instanceof Question) {
throw new \LogicException('Entity is missing or not a Question');
}
$question->setIsApproved(true);
$entityManager->flush();
$targetUrl = $adminUrlGenerator
->setController(self::class)
->setAction(Crud::PAGE_DETAIL)
->setEntityId($question->getId())
->generateUrl();
return $this->redirect($targetUrl);
}
}

Ok team, let's give this a try. Refresh and... got it! We're back on the detail page! And if we look for "Alice thought she might...", it's not on our "Pending Approval" page anymore!

Let's try one more to be sure: approve ID 23. Go to Show, click "Approve", and... it's gone. This is working!

Hiding Approve for Approved Question

The only weird thing now, which you probably saw, is that when you go to the detail page on an already-approved question... you still see the "Approve" button. Clicking on that doesn't hurt anything... but it's confusing! Fortunately, we know how to fix this.

Find your custom action... and add ->displayIf(). Pass that a static function(), which will receive the Question $question argument... and return a bool. I've been a little lazy on my return types, but you can put that if you want. Finally, return !$question->getIsApproved().

184 lines | src/Controller/Admin/QuestionCrudController.php
<?php
// ... lines 3 - 22
#[IsGranted('ROLE_MODERATOR')]
class QuestionCrudController extends AbstractCrudController
{
// ... lines 26 - 39
public function configureActions(Actions $actions): Actions
{
// ... lines 42 - 50
$approveAction = Action::new('approve')
->setTemplatePath('admin/approve_action.html.twig')
->linkToCrudAction('approve')
->addCssClass('btn btn-success')
->setIcon('fa fa-check-circle')
->displayAsButton()
->displayIf(static function (Question $question): bool {
return !$question->getIsApproved();
});
// ... lines 60 - 77
}
// ... lines 79 - 182
}

Move over now... refresh and... beautiful! The "Approve" button is gone. But when we go back to a question that does need to be approved, it's still there.

Custom Action JavaScript

If we wanted to, we could go further and write some JavaScript to make this fancier. For example, in our custom template, we could use the stimulus_controller function to reference a custom Stimulus controller. Then, when we click this button, we could, for example, open a modal that says:

Are you sure you want to approve this question?

The point is, we control what this action, link, button, etc. look like. If you want to attach some custom JavaScript, do it.

Next, let's add a global action. A "global action" is something that applies to all of the items inside of a section. We're going to create a global export action that exports questions to CSV.