The HttpFoundation Component
Edit this pageWarning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 2.3, which is no longer maintained.
Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.3 (the current stable version).
The HttpFoundation Component
The HttpFoundation component defines an object-oriented layer for the HTTP specification.
In PHP, the request is represented by some global variables ($_GET
,
$_POST
, $_FILES
, $_COOKIE
, $_SESSION
, ...) and the response is
generated by some functions (echo
, header
, setcookie
, ...).
The Symfony HttpFoundation component replaces these default PHP global variables and functions by an object-oriented layer.
Installation
You can install the component in 2 different ways:
- Install it via Composer (
symfony/http-foundation
on Packagist); - Use the official Git repository (https://github.com/symfony/http-foundation).
Then, require the vendor/autoload.php
file to enable the autoloading mechanism
provided by Composer. Otherwise, your application won't be able to find the classes
of this Symfony component.
Request
The most common way to create a request is to base it on the current PHP global variables with createFromGlobals():
1 2 3
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
$request = Request::createFromGlobals();
which is almost equivalent to the more verbose, but also more flexible, __construct() call:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
$request = new Request(
$_GET,
$_POST,
array(),
$_COOKIE,
$_FILES,
$_SERVER
);
Accessing Request Data
A Request object holds information about the client request. This information can be accessed via several public properties:
request
: equivalent of$_POST
;query
: equivalent of$_GET
($request->query->get('name')
);cookies
: equivalent of$_COOKIE
;attributes
: no equivalent - used by your app to store other data (see below);files
: equivalent of$_FILES
;server
: equivalent of$_SERVER
;headers
: mostly equivalent to a subset of$_SERVER
($request->headers->get('User-Agent')
).
Each property is a ParameterBag instance (or a sub-class of), which is a data holder class:
request
: ParameterBag;query
: ParameterBag;cookies
: ParameterBag;attributes
: ParameterBag;files
: FileBag;server
: ServerBag;headers
: HeaderBag.
All ParameterBag instances have methods to retrieve and update their data:
- all()
- Returns the parameters.
- keys()
- Returns the parameter keys.
- replace()
- Replaces the current parameters by a new set.
- add()
- Adds parameters.
- get()
- Returns a parameter by name.
- set()
- Sets a parameter by name.
- has()
-
Returns
true
if the parameter is defined. - remove()
- Removes a parameter.
The ParameterBag instance also has some methods to filter the input values:
- getAlpha()
- Returns the alphabetic characters of the parameter value;
- getAlnum()
- Returns the alphabetic characters and digits of the parameter value;
- getDigits()
- Returns the digits of the parameter value;
- getInt()
- Returns the parameter value converted to integer;
- filter()
- Filters the parameter by using the PHP filter_var function.
All getters take up to three arguments: the first one is the parameter name and the second one is the default value to return if the parameter does not exist:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
// the query string is '?foo=bar'
$request->query->get('foo');
// returns bar
$request->query->get('bar');
// returns null
$request->query->get('bar', 'bar');
// returns 'bar'
When PHP imports the request query, it handles request parameters like
foo[bar]=bar
in a special way as it creates an array. So you can get the
foo
parameter and you will get back an array with a bar
element. But
sometimes, you might want to get the value for the "original" parameter name:
foo[bar]
. This is possible with all the ParameterBag
getters like
get() via the third
argument:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
// the query string is '?foo[bar]=bar'
$request->query->get('foo');
// returns array('bar' => 'bar')
$request->query->get('foo[bar]');
// returns null
$request->query->get('foo[bar]', null, true);
// returns 'bar'
Thanks to the public attributes
property, you can store additional data
in the request, which is also an instance of
ParameterBag. This is mostly used
to attach information that belongs to the Request and that needs to be
accessed from many different points in your application. For information
on how this is used in the Symfony Framework, see
the Symfony book.
Finally, the raw data sent with the request body can be accessed using getContent():
1
$content = $request->getContent();
For instance, this may be useful to process a JSON string sent to the application by a remote service using the HTTP POST method.
Identifying a Request
In your application, you need a way to identify a request; most of the time, this is done via the "path info" of the request, which can be accessed via the getPathInfo() method:
1 2 3
// for a request to http://example.com/blog/index.php/post/hello-world
// the path info is "/post/hello-world"
$request->getPathInfo();
Simulating a Request
Instead of creating a request based on the PHP globals, you can also simulate a request:
1 2 3 4 5
$request = Request::create(
'/hello-world',
'GET',
array('name' => 'Fabien')
);
The create() method creates a request based on a URI, a method and some parameters (the query parameters or the request ones depending on the HTTP method); and of course, you can also override all other variables as well (by default, Symfony creates sensible defaults for all the PHP global variables).
Based on such a request, you can override the PHP global variables via overrideGlobals():
1
$request->overrideGlobals();
Tip
You can also duplicate an existing request via duplicate() or change a bunch of parameters with a single call to initialize().
Accessing the Session
If you have a session attached to the request, you can access it via the getSession() method; the hasPreviousSession() method tells you if the request contains a session which was started in one of the previous requests.
Accessing `Accept-*` Headers Data
You can easily access basic data extracted from Accept-*
headers
by using the following methods:
- getAcceptableContentTypes()
- Returns the list of accepted content types ordered by descending quality.
- getLanguages()
- Returns the list of accepted languages ordered by descending quality.
- getCharsets()
- Returns the list of accepted charsets ordered by descending quality.
- .. versionadded:: 2.2
- The AcceptHeader class was introduced in Symfony 2.2.
If you need to get full access to parsed data from Accept
, Accept-Language
,
Accept-Charset
or Accept-Encoding
, you can use
AcceptHeader utility class:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\AcceptHeader;
$accept = AcceptHeader::fromString($request->headers->get('Accept'));
if ($accept->has('text/html')) {
$item = $accept->get('text/html');
$charset = $item->getAttribute('charset', 'utf-8');
$quality = $item->getQuality();
}
// Accept header items are sorted by descending quality
$accepts = AcceptHeader::fromString($request->headers->get('Accept'))
->all();
Accessing other Data
The Request
class has many other methods that you can use to access the
request information. Have a look at
the Request API
for more information about them.
Response
A Response object holds all the information that needs to be sent back to the client from a given request. The constructor takes up to three arguments: the response content, the status code, and an array of HTTP headers:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
$response = new Response(
'Content',
200,
array('content-type' => 'text/html')
);
This information can also be manipulated after the Response object creation:
1 2 3 4 5 6
$response->setContent('Hello World');
// the headers public attribute is a ResponseHeaderBag
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
$response->setStatusCode(404);
When setting the Content-Type
of the Response, you can set the charset,
but it is better to set it via the
setCharset() method:
1
$response->setCharset('ISO-8859-1');
Note that by default, Symfony assumes that your Responses are encoded in UTF-8.
Sending the Response
Before sending the Response, you can ensure that it is compliant with the HTTP specification by calling the prepare() method:
1
$response->prepare($request);
Sending the response to the client is then as simple as calling send():
1
$response->send();
Setting Cookies
The response cookies can be manipulated through the headers
public
attribute:
1 2 3
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Cookie;
$response->headers->setCookie(new Cookie('foo', 'bar'));
The setCookie() method takes an instance of Cookie as an argument.
You can clear a cookie via the clearCookie() method.
Managing the HTTP Cache
The Response class has a rich set of methods to manipulate the HTTP headers related to the cache:
- setPublic();
- setPrivate();
- expire();
- setExpires();
- setMaxAge();
- setSharedMaxAge();
- setTtl();
- setClientTtl();
- setLastModified();
- setEtag();
- setVary();
The setCache() method can be used to set the most commonly used cache information in one method call:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
$response->setCache(array(
'etag' => 'abcdef',
'last_modified' => new \DateTime(),
'max_age' => 600,
's_maxage' => 600,
'private' => false,
'public' => true,
));
To check if the Response validators (ETag
, Last-Modified
) match a
conditional value specified in the client Request, use the
isNotModified()
method:
1 2 3
if ($response->isNotModified($request)) {
$response->send();
}
If the Response is not modified, it sets the status code to 304 and removes the actual response content.
Redirecting the User
To redirect the client to another URL, you can use the RedirectResponse class:
1 2 3
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RedirectResponse;
$response = new RedirectResponse('http://example.com/');
Streaming a Response
The StreamedResponse class allows you to stream the Response back to the client. The response content is represented by a PHP callable instead of a string:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\StreamedResponse;
$response = new StreamedResponse();
$response->setCallback(function () {
var_dump('Hello World');
flush();
sleep(2);
var_dump('Hello World');
flush();
});
$response->send();
Note
The flush()
function does not flush buffering. If ob_start()
has
been called before or the output_buffering
php.ini
option is enabled,
you must call ob_flush()
before flush()
.
Additionally, PHP isn't the only layer that can buffer output. Your web server might also buffer based on its configuration. What's more, if you use FastCGI, buffering can't be disabled at all.
Serving Files
When sending a file, you must add a Content-Disposition
header to your
response. While creating this header for basic file downloads is easy, using
non-ASCII filenames is more involving. The
makeDisposition()
abstracts the hard work behind a simple API:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\ResponseHeaderBag;
$d = $response->headers->makeDisposition(
ResponseHeaderBag::DISPOSITION_ATTACHMENT,
'foo.pdf'
);
$response->headers->set('Content-Disposition', $d);
2.2
The BinaryFileResponse class was introduced in Symfony 2.2.
Alternatively, if you are serving a static file, you can use a BinaryFileResponse:
1 2 3 4
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\BinaryFileResponse;
$file = 'path/to/file.txt';
$response = new BinaryFileResponse($file);
The BinaryFileResponse
will automatically handle Range
and
If-Range
headers from the request. It also supports X-Sendfile
(see for Nginx and Apache). To make use of it, you need to determine
whether or not the X-Sendfile-Type
header should be trusted and call
trustXSendfileTypeHeader()
if it should:
1
BinaryFileResponse::trustXSendfileTypeHeader();
With the BinaryFileResponse
, you can still set the Content-Type
of the sent file,
or change its Content-Disposition
:
1 2 3 4 5
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
$response->setContentDisposition(
ResponseHeaderBag::DISPOSITION_ATTACHMENT,
'filename.txt'
);
2.6
The deleteFileAfterSend()
method was introduced in Symfony 2.6.
It is possible to delete the file after the request is sent with the
deleteFileAfterSend() method.
Please note that this will not work when the X-Sendfile
header is set.
Note
If you just created the file during this same request, the file may be sent
without any content. This may be due to cached file stats that return zero for
the size of the file. To fix this issue, call clearstatcache(false, $file)
with the path to the binary file.
Creating a JSON Response
Any type of response can be created via the Response class by setting the right content and headers. A JSON response might look like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
$response = new Response();
$response->setContent(json_encode(array(
'data' => 123,
)));
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'application/json');
There is also a helpful JsonResponse class, which can make this even easier:
1 2 3 4 5 6
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse;
$response = new JsonResponse();
$response->setData(array(
'data' => 123
));
This encodes your array of data to JSON and sets the Content-Type
header
to application/json
.
Caution
To avoid XSSI JSON Hijacking, you should pass an associative array
as the outer-most array to JsonResponse
and not an indexed array so
that the final result is an object (e.g. {"object": "not inside an array"}
)
instead of an array (e.g. [{"object": "inside an array"}]
). Read
the OWASP guidelines for more information.
Only methods that respond to GET requests are vulnerable to XSSI 'JSON Hijacking'. Methods responding to POST requests only remain unaffected.
JSONP Callback
If you're using JSONP, you can set the callback function that the data should be passed to:
1
$response->setCallback('handleResponse');
In this case, the Content-Type
header will be text/javascript
and
the response content will look like this:
1
handleResponse({'data': 123});
Session
The session information is in its own document: Session Management.