New in Symfony 2.2: Cache support for static pages

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:

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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:

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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:

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/**
 * @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:

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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:

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