How to Access Services or Config from Inside a Form

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Sometimes, you may need to access a service or other configuration from inside of your form class. To do this, you have 2 options:

1) Pass Options to your Form

The simplest way to pass services or configuration to your form is via form options. Suppose you need to access the doctrine.orm.entity_manager service so that you can make a query. First, allow (in fact, require) a new entity_manager option to be passed to your form:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    // ...

    public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
    {
        // ...

        $resolver->setRequired('entity_manager');
    }
}

Now that you've done this, you must pass an entity_manager option when you create your form:

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// src/AppBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
use AppBundle\Form\TaskType;

// ...
public function newAction()
{
    $task = ...;
    $form = $this->createForm(TaskType::class, $task, array(
        'entity_manager' => $this->get('doctrine.orm.entity_manager'),
    ));

    // ...
}

Finally, the entity_manager option is accessible in the $options argument of your buildForm() method:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        /** @var \Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager $entityManager */
        $entityManager = $options['entity_manager'];
        // ...
    }

    // ...
}

Use this method to pass anything to your form.

2) Define your Form as a Service

Alternatively, you can define your form class as a service. This is a good idea if you want to re-use the form in several places - registering it as a service makes this easier.

Suppose you need to access the doctrine.orm.entity_manager service so that you can make a query. First, add this as an argument to your form class:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    private $entityManager;

    public function __construct(EntityManager $entityManager)
    {
        $this->entityManager = $entityManager;
    }

    // ...
}

Next, register this as a service and tag it with form.type:

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# src/AppBundle/Resources/config/services.yml
services:
    app.form.type.task:
        class: AppBundle\Form\TaskType
        arguments: ['@doctrine.orm.entity_manager']
        tags:
            - { name: form.type }

That's it! Your controller - where you create the form - doesn't need to change at all: Symfony is smart enough to load the TaskType from the container.

Read How to Create a Custom Form Field Type for more information.

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