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> Symfony 3 > Symfony 3: Level up with Services and the Container
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08.

Tagging Services (and having Fun!)

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Start your All-Access Pass

We need to somehow tell Twig about our fun new Twig extension. To do that, first, register it as a service. The name doesn't matter, so how about app.markdown_extension. Set the class, but skip arguments: we don't have any yet, so this is optional:

15 lines | app/config/services.yml
// ... lines 1 - 5
services:
// ... lines 7 - 10
app.markdown_extension:
class: AppBundle\Twig\MarkdownExtension
// ... lines 13 - 15

Now, this service is a bit different: it's not something that we intend to use directly in our controller, like app.markdown_transformer. Instead, we simply want Twig to know about our service. We somehow need to raise our hand and say:

Oh, oh oh! This service is special - this service is a Twig Extension!

We do that by adding a tag. The syntax is weird, so stay with me: Add tags:, then under that a dash and a set of curly-braces. Inside, set name to twig.extension:

15 lines | app/config/services.yml
// ... lines 1 - 5
services:
// ... lines 7 - 10
app.markdown_extension:
class: AppBundle\Twig\MarkdownExtension
tags:
- { name: twig.extension }

And that's it.

Real quick - make sure it works. Refresh! Boom! We see a pretty awesome-looking upper-case string.

What are these Tags???

Tags are the way to hook your services into different parts of the core system. When Symfony creates the twig service, it looks for all services in the container that are tagged with twig.extension. It then configures these as extensions on twig.

Google for "Symfony dependency injection tags": there's an awesome reference section on Symfony.com called The Dependency Injection Tags. It lists every tag that can be used to hook into core Symfony. And if you're tagging a service, well, you're probably doing something really cool.

For example, if you want to register an event listener and actually hook into Symfony's boot process, you create a service and then tag it with kernel.event_listener. You won't memorize all of these: you just need to understand their purpose. Someday, you'll read some docs or watch a tutorial here that will tell you to tag a service. I want you to understand what that tag is actually doing.

Finish the Extension

Let's finish our extension: we need to parse this through markdown. We find ourselves in a familiar position: we're inside a service and need access to some other service: MarkdownTransformer. Dependency injection!

Add public function __construct() with a MarkdownTransformer argument. I'll hold option+enter and select "Initialize fields" as a shortcut. Again, this just added the property for me and assigned it in __construct():

33 lines | src/AppBundle/Twig/MarkdownExtension.php
// ... lines 1 - 6
class MarkdownExtension extends \Twig_Extension
{
private $markdownTransformer;
public function __construct(MarkdownTransformer $markdownTransformer)
{
$this->markdownTransformer = $markdownTransformer;
}
// ... lines 15 - 31
}

Go Deeper!

Watch our PhpStorm Course to learn about these great shortcuts.

In parseMarkdown(), return $this->markdownTransformer->parse() and pass it $str:

33 lines | src/AppBundle/Twig/MarkdownExtension.php
// ... lines 1 - 6
class MarkdownExtension extends \Twig_Extension
{
// ... lines 9 - 22
public function parseMarkdown($str)
{
return $this->markdownTransformer->parse($str);
}
// ... lines 27 - 31
}

The last step is to update our service in services.yml. Add arguments: ['@app.markdown_transformer']:

16 lines | app/config/services.yml
// ... lines 1 - 5
services:
// ... lines 7 - 10
app.markdown_extension:
// ... lines 12 - 14
arguments: ['@app.markdown_transformer']

Refresh! And it's working. Now, let me show you a shortcut.