Installation

Download the Bundle

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composer require sonata-project/admin-bundle

Download a Storage Bundle

You've now downloaded the SonataAdminBundle. While this bundle contains all functionality, it needs storage bundles to be able to communicate with a database. Before using the SonataAdminBundle, you have to download one of these storage bundles. The official storage bundles are:

• SonataDoctrineORMAdminBundle (integrates the Doctrine ORM);
• SonataDoctrineMongoDBAdminBundle (integrates the Doctrine MongoDB ODM);

You can download them in the same way as the SonataAdminBundle. Please, choose one and follow its installation instructions before proceeding.

Enable the Bundle

Then, enable the bundle and the bundles it relies on by adding the following line in bundles.php file of your project:

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// config/bundles.php

return [
    // ...
    Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\SecurityBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Sonata\BlockBundle\SonataBlockBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Knp\Bundle\MenuBundle\KnpMenuBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Sonata\AdminBundle\SonataAdminBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Sonata\Doctrine\Bridge\Symfony\SonataDoctrineBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Sonata\Form\Bridge\Symfony\SonataFormBundle::class => ['all' => true],
    Sonata\Twig\Bridge\Symfony\SonataTwigBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

Configure the Installed Bundles

Now all needed bundles are downloaded and registered, you have to add some configuration. The admin interface is using SonataBlockBundle to put everything in blocks. You have to tell the block bundle about the existence of the admin block:

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# config/packages/sonata_admin.yaml

sonata_block:
    blocks:
        # enable the SonataAdminBundle block
        sonata.admin.block.admin_list:
            contexts: [admin]

Enable the "translator" service

The translator service is required by SonataAdmin to display all labels properly. For more information: https://symfony.com/doc/5.4/translation.html#configuration

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# config/packages/framework.yaml

framework:
    translator: { fallbacks: ['%locale%'] }

Define routes

The bundles are now registered and configured correctly. To be able to access SonataAdminBundle's pages, the Symfony router needs to know the routes provided by the SonataAdminBundle. You can do this by adding its routes to your application's routing file:

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# config/routes/sonata_admin.yaml

admin_area:
    resource: '@SonataAdminBundle/Resources/config/routing/sonata_admin.xml'
    prefix: /admin

_sonata_admin:
    resource: .
    type: sonata_admin
    prefix: /admin

At this point you can already access the (empty) admin dashboard by visiting the URL: http://yoursite.local/admin/dashboard.

Preparing your Environment

As with all bundles you install, it's a good practice to clear the cache and install the assets:

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bin/console cache:clear
bin/console assets:install

The Admin Interface

You've finished the installation process, congratulations. If you fire up the server, you can now visit the admin page on http://localhost:8000/admin

As you can see, the admin panel is very empty. This is because no bundle has provided admin functionality for the admin bundle yet. Fortunately, you'll learn how to do this in the next chapter.