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How to Use the submit() Function to Handle Form Submissions

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How to Use the submit() Function to Handle Form Submissions

With the handleRequest() method, it is really easy to handle form submissions:

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use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
// ...

public function newAction(Request $request)
{
    $form = $this->createFormBuilder()
        // ...
        ->getForm();

    $form->handleRequest($request);

    if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
        // perform some action...

        return $this->redirectToRoute('task_success');
    }

    return $this->render('product/new.html.twig', array(
        'form' => $form->createView(),
    ));
}

Tip

To see more about this method, read Handling Form Submissions.

Calling Form::submit() manually

In some cases, you want better control over when exactly your form is submitted and what data is passed to it. Instead of using the handleRequest() method, pass the submitted data directly to submit():

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use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
// ...

public function newAction(Request $request)
{
    $form = $this->createFormBuilder()
        // ...
        ->getForm();

    if ($request->isMethod('POST')) {
        $form->submit($request->request->get($form->getName()));

        if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
            // perform some action...

            return $this->redirectToRoute('task_success');
        }
    }

    return $this->render('product/new.html.twig', array(
        'form' => $form->createView(),
    ));
}

Tip

Forms consisting of nested fields expect an array in submit(). You can also submit individual fields by calling submit() directly on the field:

$form->get('firstName')->submit('Fabien');

Tip

When submitting a form via a "PATCH" request, you may want to update only a few submitted fields. To achieve this, you may pass an optional second boolean argument to submit(). Passing false will remove any missing fields within the form object. Otherwise, the missing fields will be set to null.

Caution

When the second parameter $clearMissing is false, like with the "PATCH" method, the validation extension will only handle the submitted fields. If the underlying data needs to be validated, this should be done manually, i.e. using the validator.

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