Templates

For information on overriding templates, see

• Creating and using Templates.
• How to use Bundle Inheritance to Override parts of a Bundle

Routing

Routing is never automatically imported in Symfony2. If you want to include the routes from any bundle, then they must be manually imported from somewhere in your application (e.g. app/config/routing.yml).

The easiest way to "override" a bundle's routing is to never import it at all. Instead of importing a third-party bundle's routing, simply copying that routing file into your application, modify it, and import it instead.

Controllers

Assuming the third-party bundle involved uses non-service controllers (which is almost always the case), you can easily override controllers via bundle inheritance. For more information, see How to use Bundle Inheritance to Override parts of a Bundle. If the controller is a service, see the next section on how to override it.

Services & Configuration

In order to override/extend a service, there are two options. First, you can set the parameter holding the service's class name to your own class by setting it in app/config/config.yml. This of course is only possible if the class name is defined as a parameter in the service config of the bundle containing the service. For example, to override the class used for Symfony's translator service, you would override the translator.class parameter. Knowing exactly which parameter to override may take some research. For the translator, the parameter is defined and used in the Resources/config/translation.xml file in the core FrameworkBundle:

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# app/config/config.yml
parameters:
    translator.class:      Acme\HelloBundle\Translation\Translator

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<!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<parameters>
    <parameter key="translator.class">Acme\HelloBundle\Translation\Translator</parameter>
</parameters>

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// app/config/config.php
$container->setParameter('translator.class', 'Acme\HelloBundle\Translation\Translator');

Secondly, if the class is not available as a parameter, you want to make sure the class is always overridden when your bundle is used, or you need to modify something beyond just the class name, you should use a compiler pass:

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// src/Acme/DemoBundle/DependencyInjection/Compiler/OverrideServiceCompilerPass.php
namespace Acme\DemoBundle\DependencyInjection\Compiler;

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;

class OverrideServiceCompilerPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
    public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
    {
        $definition = $container->getDefinition('original-service-id');
        $definition->setClass('Acme\DemoBundle\YourService');
    }
}

In this example you fetch the service definition of the original service, and set its class name to your own class.

See How to work with Compiler Passes in Bundles for information on how to use compiler passes. If you want to do something beyond just overriding the class - like adding a method call - you can only use the compiler pass method.

Entities & Entity mapping

Due to the way Doctrine works, it is not possible to override entity mapping of a bundle. However, if a bundle provides a mapped superclass (such as the User entity in the FOSUserBundle) one can override attributes and associations. Learn more about this feature and its limitations in the Doctrine documentation.

Forms

In order to override a form type, it has to be registered as a service (meaning it is tagged as "form.type"). You can then override it as you would override any service as explained in How to Override any Part of a Bundle. This, of course, will only work if the type is referred to by its alias rather than being instantiated, e.g.:

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$builder->add('name', 'custom_type');

rather than:

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$builder->add('name', new CustomType());

Validation metadata

Symfony loads all validation configuration files from every bundle and combines them into one validation metadata tree. This means you are able to add new constraints to a property, but you cannot override them.

To override this, the 3rd party bundle needs to have configuration for validation groups. For instance, the FOSUserBundle has this configuration. To create your own validation, add the constraints to a new validation group:

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# src/Acme/UserBundle/Resources/config/validation.yml
Fos\UserBundle\Model\User:
    properties:
        plainPassword:
            - NotBlank:
                groups: [AcmeValidation]
            - Length:
                min: 6
                minMessage: fos_user.password.short
                groups: [AcmeValidation]

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<!-- src/Acme/UserBundle/Resources/config/validation.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<constraint-mapping xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping http://symfony.com/schema/dic/constraint-mapping/constraint-mapping-1.0.xsd">

    <class name="Fos\UserBundle\Model\User">
        <property name="password">
            <constraint name="Length">
                <option name="min">6</option>
                <option name="minMessage">fos_user.password.short</option>
                <option name="groups">
                    <value>AcmeValidation</value>
                </option>
            </constraint>
        </property>
    </class>
</constraint-mapping>

Now, update the FOSUserBundle configuration, so it uses your validation groups instead of the original ones.

Translations

Translations are not related to bundles, but to domains. That means that you can override the translations from any translation file, as long as it is in the correct domain.