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by Fabien Potencier – May 17, 2013

What happened last week in Symfony?

This week, the new Symfony 2.3 branch was created. In addition, the first Symfony 2.3 release candidate version was published, which includes tons of great small improvements. Lastly, one of the biggest Symfony events of the year, the Symfony Live Portland 2013 conference, will take place next week.

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New in Symfony 2.2: Cache support for static pages
by Fabien Potencier – December 11, 2012 – 20 comments

Contributed by
Sebastian Krebs
in #6083.

All websites have some kind of static pages like an about page; a static page being a page that does not need any logic to be rendered. As there is no logic, creating an empty controller for them is simple but cumbersome:

public function aboutAction()
{
    return $this->render('AcmeBundle:Pages:about.html.twig');
}

public function locationAction()
{
    return $this->render('AcmeBundle:Pages:location.html.twig');
}

// ...

And then, you need to also reference them in the routing configuration file:

about: { pattern: /about, defaults: { _controller: 'AcmeBundle:Pages:about' } }
location: { pattern: /location, defaults: { _controller: 'AcmeBundle:Pages:location' } }

... and even if using annotations simplifies things a bit, that is still too much work:

/**
 * @Route("/about", name="about")
 * @Template
 */
public function aboutAction()
{
    return array();
}

/**
 * @Route("/location", name="location")
 * @Template
 */
public function locationAction()
{
    return array();
}

// ...

Instead, you can use the built-in FrameworkBundle:Template:template controller and configure everything from the routing configuration file directly:

about: { pattern: /about, defaults: { _controller: FrameworkBundle:Template:template, template: 'AcmeBundle:Pages:about.html.twig' } }
location: { pattern: /location, defaults: { _controller: FrameworkBundle:Template:template, template: 'AcmeBundle:Pages:location.html.twig' } }

In this configuration, we associate a URL to a template via the FrameworkBundle:Template:template controller. This has been working since 2.0, but as of 2.2, you can also set the caching strategy:

about:
    pattern: /about
    defaults:
        _controller: FrameworkBundle:Template:template
        template: 'AcmeBundle:Pages:about.html.twig'
        maxAge: 86400
        sharedMaxAge: 86400
        private: false

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Comments

#1 Marc Weistroff said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:06

great!
#2 Mario J. Inga Cahuana said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:14

Good
#3 Skander MABROUK said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:22

Nice ! it reduces the number of lines of codes for just having a static page. In addition, they are cached by default. No need to do that manually :)

thanx
#4 Matteo Giordano said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:23

I "discovered" this a while ago, it _really_ deserves a proper place in the documentation https://coderwall.com/p/pj1opa
#5 Belgacem TLILI said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:31

great !
a good practice !
#6 Tito Miguel Costa said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:35

making things easier, good job
#7 Fabien Potencier said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:44

I forgot to mention that there is a PR to add this to the documentation:

https://github.com/symfony/symfony-docs/pull/2002
#8 Chris Sedlmayr said on the 2012/12/11 at 16:45

Didn't know about that feature at all, nice highlight and nice addition!
#9 Jean-François Côté said on the 2012/12/11 at 17:05

Wow, great feature!
#10 Symfomany said on the 2012/12/11 at 20:46

Amazing Routing !!! HTTP Cache Control Powa
#11 Thomas Luzat said on the 2012/12/11 at 21:26

Nice. FrameworkBundle:Template:template is new to me, too.
#12 David Badura said on the 2012/12/11 at 22:34

great!
#13 Ardian Yuli Setyanto said on the 2012/12/12 at 07:47

Great new info,
But if this template extends ::base.html.twig that contain username logged in user,
will it cache all html output as seen by user in their browser,
or just content from this template ?

Thanks
#14 Piotr Antosik said on the 2012/12/12 at 09:23

great, waiting for 2.2!
#15 Ben Bieker said on the 2012/12/12 at 09:41

wow, that was something that annoyed me for a long time too and this solution is just awesome!
#16 Marco Leong said on the 2012/12/12 at 09:51

Good !
#17 Yosvel Quintero Arguelles said on the 2012/12/12 at 17:53

Symfony2 great,
always helping to make life easier
#18 Jean-Marc Chieng said on the 2012/12/12 at 23:39

super -)
#19 Michal Klik said on the 2012/12/17 at 22:05

I have never noticed that! Documentation is a must for such things. I would use it a while ago. Great feature!
#20 Víctor Mateo said on the 2013/01/14 at 23:23

Cool feature!