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How to Use HTTP Methods beyond GET and POST in Routes

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How to Use HTTP Methods beyond GET and POST in Routes

The HTTP method of a request is one of the requirements that can be checked when seeing if it matches a route. This is introduced in the routing chapter of the book "Routing" with examples using GET and POST. You can also use other HTTP verbs in this way. For example, if you have a blog post entry then you could use the same URL path to show it, make changes to it and delete it by matching on GET, PUT and DELETE.

  • YAML
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    blog_show:
    path:     /blog/{slug}
    defaults: { _controller: AppBundle:Blog:show }
    methods:  [GET]

blog_update:
    path:     /blog/{slug}
    defaults: { _controller: AppBundle:Blog:update }
    methods:  [PUT]

blog_delete:
    path:     /blog/{slug}
    defaults: { _controller: AppBundle:Blog:delete }
    methods:  [DELETE]
  • XML
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    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<routes xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/routing"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/routing http://symfony.com/schema/routing/routing-1.0.xsd">

    <route id="blog_show" path="/blog/{slug}" methods="GET">
        <default key="_controller">AppBundle:Blog:show</default>
    </route>

    <route id="blog_update" path="/blog/{slug}" methods="PUT">
        <default key="_controller">AppBundle:Blog:update</default>
    </route>

    <route id="blog_delete" path="/blog/{slug}" methods="DELETE">
        <default key="_controller">AppBundle:Blog:delete</default>
    </route>
</routes>
  • PHP
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    use Symfony\Component\Routing\RouteCollection;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Route;

$collection = new RouteCollection();
$collection->add('blog_show', new Route('/blog/{slug}', array(
    '_controller' => 'AppBundle:Blog:show',
), array(), array(), '', array(), array('GET')));

$collection->add('blog_update', new Route('/blog/{slug}', array(
    '_controller' => 'AppBundle:Blog:update',
), array(), array(), '', array(), array('PUT')));

$collection->add('blog_delete', new Route('/blog/{slug}', array(
    '_controller' => 'AppBundle:Blog:delete',
), array(), array(), '', array('DELETE')));

return $collection;

Faking the Method with _method

Note

The _method functionality shown here is disabled by default in Symfony 2.2 and enabled by default in Symfony 2.3. To control it in Symfony 2.2, you must call Request::enableHttpMethodParameterOverride before you handle the request (e.g. in your front controller). In Symfony 2.3, use the http_method_override option.

Unfortunately, life isn't quite this simple, since most browsers do not support sending PUT and DELETE requests via the method attribute in an HTML form. Fortunately, Symfony provides you with a simple way of working around this limitation. By including a _method parameter in the query string or parameters of an HTTP request, Symfony will use this as the method when matching routes. Forms automatically include a hidden field for this parameter if their submission method is not GET or POST. See the related chapter in the forms documentation for more information.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.