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01.

Bundles

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Woh! You're back! Hey friend! Ok, I'm glad you're here: this is a big episode for us. We're about to learn some of the most critical concepts that will really help you to master Symfony... and of course, impress all your friends.

Like always, you should totally code along with me. Download the code from the course page and move into the start directory. I already have that ready, so let's start the built-in web server. Open a new terminal tab and run the ./bin/console server:run command:

./bin/console server:run

Ding! Now dust off your browser and try to load http://localhost:8000/genus/octopus, which is the page we made in the last tutorial. Awesome!

The 2 Parts of Symfony

After episode 1, we already know a lot. We know that Symfony is pretty simple: create a route, create a controller function, make sure that function returns a Response object and then go eat a sandwich. So, Route -> Controller -> Response -> Sandwich. And suddenly, you know half of Symfony... and you're not hungry anymore.

The second half of Symfony is a all about the huge number of optional useful objects that can help you get your work done. For example, there's a logger object, a mailer object, and a templating object that... uh... renders templates. In fact, the $this->render() shortcut we've been using in the controller is just a shortcut to go out to the templating object and call a method on it:

398 lines | vendor/symfony/symfony/src/Symfony/Bundle/FrameworkBundle/Controller/Controller.php
// ... lines 1 - 11
namespace Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller;
// ... lines 13 - 38
abstract class Controller implements ContainerAwareInterface
{
// ... lines 41 - 185
protected function render($view, array $parameters = array(), Response $response = null)
{
if ($this->container->has('templating')) {
return $this->container->get('templating')->renderResponse($view, $parameters, $response);
}
// ... lines 191 - 202
}
// ... lines 204 - 396
}

All of these useful objects - or services - are put into one big beautiful object called the container. If I give you the container, then you're incredibly dangerous: you can fetch any object you want and do anything.

How do we know what handy services are inside of the container? Just use the debug:container command:

./bin/console debug:container

You can even search for services - like log:

./bin/console debug:container log

But Where do Services Come From?

But where do these come from? What magical, mystical creatures are providing us with all of these free tools? The answer is: the bundle fairies.

In your IDE, open up app/AppKernel.php:

54 lines | app/AppKernel.php
// ... lines 1 - 5
class AppKernel extends Kernel
{
public function registerBundles()
{
$bundles = array(
new Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\FrameworkBundle(),
new Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\SecurityBundle(),
new Symfony\Bundle\TwigBundle\TwigBundle(),
new Symfony\Bundle\MonologBundle\MonologBundle(),
new Symfony\Bundle\SwiftmailerBundle\SwiftmailerBundle(),
new Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\DoctrineBundle(),
new Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\SensioFrameworkExtraBundle(),
// ... lines 18 - 20
new AppBundle\AppBundle(),
);
if (in_array($this->getEnvironment(), array('dev', 'test'), true)) {
$bundles[] = new Symfony\Bundle\DebugBundle\DebugBundle();
$bundles[] = new Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle\WebProfilerBundle();
$bundles[] = new Sensio\Bundle\DistributionBundle\SensioDistributionBundle();
$bundles[] = new Sensio\Bundle\GeneratorBundle\SensioGeneratorBundle();
}
return $bundles;
}
// ... lines 33 - 52
}

The kernel is the heart of your Symfony application... but it really doesn't do much. Its main job is to initialize all the bundles we need. A bundle is basically just a Symfony plugin, and its main job is to add services to your container.

Remember that giant list from a minute ago? Yep, every single service in that list is provided to us from one of these bundles.

But at its simplest: a bundle is basically just a directory full of PHP classes, configuration and other goodies. And hey, we have our own: AppBundle:

54 lines | app/AppKernel.php
// ... lines 1 - 5
class AppKernel extends Kernel
{
public function registerBundles()
{
$bundles = array(
// ... lines 11 - 20
new AppBundle\AppBundle(),
);
// ... lines 23 - 31
}
// ... lines 33 - 52
}

Install a Bundle: Get more Services

I have challenge for us: I want to render some of this octopus information through a markdown parser. So the question is, does Symfony already have a markdown parsing service?

I don't know! Let's find out via debug:container:

./bin/console debug:container markdown

Hmm, nothing: there's no built-in tool to help us.

Symfony community to the rescue! If you're missing a tool, there might be a Symfony bundle that provides it. In this case, there is: it's called KnpMarkdownBundle.

Copy its composer require line. You don't need to include the version constraint: Composer will figure that out for us. Run that in your terminal:

composer require knplabs/knp-markdown-bundle

Let's keep busy while that's working. To enable the bundle, grab the new statement from the docs and paste that into AppKernel: the order of these doesn't matter:

54 lines | app/AppKernel.php
// ... lines 1 - 5
class AppKernel extends Kernel
{
public function registerBundles()
{
$bundles = array(
// ... lines 11 - 18
new Knp\Bundle\MarkdownBundle\KnpMarkdownBundle(),
// ... lines 20 - 21
);
// ... lines 23 - 31
}
// ... lines 33 - 52
}

That's it! Just wait for Composer to finish its job... and maybe send a nice tweet to Jordi - he's the creator and maintainer of Composer. There we go!

Ok, before we do anything else, let's run an experiment. Try running debug:container again with a search for markdown.

./bin/console debug:container markdown

Boom! Suddenly, there are two services matching. These are coming from the bundle we just installed. The one we're really interested in is markdown.parser.