This tutorial has a new version, check it out!
> Symfony 2 > Starting in Symfony2: Course 2 (2.4+)
Login to bookmark this video
Buy Access to Course
19.

Handling Form Submissions

Share this awesome video!

|

Keep on Learning!

Start your All-Access Pass

Handling Form Submissions

Ok, let’s get this form to actually submit! Since we’re submitting back to the same route and controller, we want to process things only if the request is a POST.

Getting the Request object

First, we’ll need Symfony’s Request object. To get this in a controller, add a $request argument that’s type-hinted with Symfony’s Request class:

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

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

class RegisterController extends Controller
{
    // ...
    public function registerAction(Request $request)
    {
        // ...
    }
}

Normally, if you have an argument here, Symfony tries to populate it from a routing wildcard with the same name as the variable. If it doesn’t find one, it throws a giant error. The only exception to that rule is this: if you type-hint an argument with the Request class, Symfony will give you that object. This doesn’t work for everything, only the Request class.

Using handleRequest

Use the form’s handleRequest method to actually process the data. Next, add an if statement that checks to see if the form was submitted and if all of the data is valid:

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

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

public function registerAction(Request $request)
{
    $form = $this->createFormBuilder()
        // ...
        ->getForm()
    ;

    $form->handleRequest($request);
    if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {

        // do something in a moment
    }

    return array('form' => $form);
}

The handleRequest method grabs the POST’ed data from the request, processes it, and runs any validation. And actually, it only does this for POST requests so on a GET request, $form->isSubmitted() returns false.

Tip

If you have a form that’s submitted via a different HTTP method, set the method.

If the form is submitted because it’s a POST request and passes validation, let’s just print the submitted data for now. If the form is invalid, or if this is a GET request, it’ll just skip this block and re-render the form with errors if there are any:

if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
    var_dump($form->getData());die;
}

Time to test it! We haven’t added validation yet, but the password fields have built-in validation if the values don’t match. When I submit, the form is re-rendered, meaning there was an error.

In fact, there’s now a little red box on the web debug toolbar. If we click it, we can see details about the form: what was submitted and options for each field.

Head back and fill in the form correctly. Now we see our dumped data:

array(
    'username' => string 'foo' (length=3),
    'email' => string 'foo@foo.com' (length=11),
    'password' => string 'foo' (length=3),
)

Using the Submitted Data Array

Notice that the data is an array with a key and value for each field. Let’s take this data and build a new User object from it. There is an easier way to do this, and I’ll show you in a second:

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

use Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User;
// ...

$form->handleRequest($request);
if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
    $data = $form->getData();

    $user = new User();
    $user->setUsername($data['username']);
    $user->setEmail($data['email']);
}

Encoding the User’s Password

We still need to encode and set the password. For now, let’s copy in some code from our user fixtures to help with this. We’ll make this much more awesome in the next screencast:

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

private function encodePassword(User $user, $plainPassword)
{
    $encoder = $this->container->get('security.encoder_factory')
        ->getEncoder($user)
    ;

    return $encoder->encodePassword($plainPassword, $user->getSalt());
}

Use this function, then finally persist and flush the new User:

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

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

    $user = new User();
    $user->setUsername($data['username']);
    $user->setEmail($data['email']);
    $user->setPassword($this->encodePassword($user, $data['password']));

    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
    $em->persist($user);
    $em->flush();

    // we'll redirect the user next...
}

Redirecting after Success

The last step of any successful form submit is to redirect - we’ll redirect to the homepage. First, we need to generate a URL - just like we do with the path() function in Twig. In a controller, there’s a generateUrl function that works exactly the same way:

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

if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
    // ...

    $em->flush();

    $url = $this->generateUrl('event');
}

To redirect, use the redirect function and pass it the URL:

if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
    // ...
    $url = $this->generateUrl('event');

    return $this->redirect($url);
}

Tip

If you use Symfony 2.6 or newer, you have a redirectToRoute method that allows you to redirect based on the route name instead of having to generate the URL first. It’s a shortcut!

Remember that a controller always returns a Response object. redirect is just a shortcut to create a Response that’s all setup to redirect to this URL.

Ok, time to kick this proton torpedo! As expected, we end up on the homepage. We can even login as the new user!

You Don’t Need isSubmitted

Head back to the controller and remove the isSubmitted() call in the if statement:

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

$form->handleRequest($request);
if ($form->isValid()) {
    // ...
}

This actually doesn’t change anything because isValid() automatically returns false if the form wasn’t submitted - meaning, if the request isn’t a POST. So either just do this, or keep the isSubmitted part in there if you want - I find it adds some clarity.