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20.

Form: Default Data

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Form: Default Data

Now, what if we wanted some default data to appear on the form? Well, we can just pass the data as the first argument to createFormBuilder:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Controller/RegisterController.php
// ...

public function registerAction(Request $request)
{
    $defaultData = array(
        'username' => 'Leia',
    );

    $form = $this->createFormBuilder($defaultData)
        // ...
        ->getForm()
    ;

    // ...
}

Refresh and check that out.

Having the Form to a User object: The data_class Option

When we submit, $form->getData() gives us an associative array. That’s cool, but what if it actually built the User object for us? Remove the default data we just added and pass a second argument to createFormBuilder. This is an array of options for the form and we’ll pass it a data_class key that’s set to our User class:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Controller/RegisterController.php
// ...

public function registerAction(Request $request)
{
    $form = $this->createFormBuilder(null, array(
        'data_class' => 'Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User',
    ))
        // ...
        ->getForm()
    ;

    // ...
}

Let’s dump the form values again and try it:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Controller/RegisterController.php
// ...

if ($form->isValid()) {
    $data = $form->getData();
    var_dump($data);die;

    // all the User saving code from before ...
}

Cool! Instead of an associative array, we get back a full User object populated with the form data. Behind the scenes, the form creates a new User object and then calls setUsername, setEmail and setPassword on it, passing each the value from the form.

Now, We can simplify things on our controller:

// inside registerAction()
if ($form->isValid()) {
    $user = $form->getData();

    $user->setPassword(
        $this->encodePassword($user, $user->getPassword())
    );

    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
    // save the user and redirect just as before
}

Default Data with an Object

So how can we set default data on the form now? Put back the array we had earlier:

$defaultData = array(
    'username' => 'Leia',
);

$form = $this->createFormBuilder($defaultData, array(
    'data_class' => 'Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User',
))
    // ...
    ->getForm()
;

Refresh and look at the error message closely:

The form's view data is expected to be an instance of class
Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User, but is a(n) array. You can avoid
this error by setting the "data_class" option to null or by adding
a view transformer that transforms a(n) array to an instance
of Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User.

It’s telling us that we gave the form an array but it was expecting a User object. The data_class option tells the form that both the output and the input of the form should be a User. So to set default data, just create a User object, give it some data and pass it in:

$user = new User();
$user->setUsername('Leia');

$form = $this->createFormBuilder($user, array(
    'data_class' => 'Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User',
))
    // ...
    ->getForm()
;

Refresh now! It looks great!