Controller Action Naming

The first Symfony versions required that controller method names ended in Action (e.g. newAction(), showAction()). This suffix became optional when annotations were introduced for controllers. In modern Symfony applications this suffix is neither required nor recommended, so you can safely remove it.

Routing Configuration

To load routes defined as annotations in your controllers, add the following configuration to the main routing configuration file:

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# config/routes.yaml
controllers:
    resource: '../src/Controller/'
    type:     annotation

This configuration will load annotations from any controller stored inside the src/Controller/ directory and even from its subdirectories. So if your application defines lots of controllers, it's perfectly ok to reorganize them into subdirectories:

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/
├─ ...
└─ src/
   ├─ ...
   └─ Controller/
      ├─ DefaultController.php
      ├─ ...
      ├─ Api/
      │  ├─ ...
      │  └─ ...
      └─ Backend/
         ├─ ...
         └─ ...

Template Configuration

The @Template annotation is useful, but also involves some magic. We don't think its benefit is worth the magic, and so recommend against using it.

Most of the time, @Template is used without any parameters, which makes it more difficult to know which template is being rendered. It also makes it less obvious to beginners that a controller should always return a Response object (unless you're using a view layer).

What does the Controller look like

Considering all this, here is an example of what the controller should look like for the homepage of our app:

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namespace App\Controller;

use App\Entity\Post;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Annotation\Route;

class DefaultController extends AbstractController
{
    /**
     * @Route("/", name="homepage")
     */
    public function index()
    {
        $posts = $this->getDoctrine()
            ->getRepository(Post::class)
            ->findLatest();

        return $this->render('default/index.html.twig', [
            'posts' => $posts,
        ]);
    }
}

Fetching Services

If you extend the base AbstractController class, you can't access services directly from the container via $this->container->get() or $this->get(). Instead, you must use dependency injection to fetch services: most easily done by type-hinting action method arguments:

By not fetching services directly from the container, you can make your services private, which has several advantages.

Using the ParamConverter

If you're using Doctrine, then you can optionally use the ParamConverter to automatically query for an entity and pass it as an argument to your controller.

For example:

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use App\Entity\Post;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Annotation\Route;

/**
 * @Route("/{id}", name="admin_post_show")
 */
public function show(Post $post)
{
    $deleteForm = $this->createDeleteForm($post);

    return $this->render('admin/post/show.html.twig', [
        'post' => $post,
        'delete_form' => $deleteForm->createView(),
    ]);
}

Normally, you'd expect a $id argument to show(). Instead, by creating a new argument ($post) and type-hinting it with the Post class (which is a Doctrine entity), the ParamConverter automatically queries for an object whose $id property matches the {id} value. It will also show a 404 page if no Post can be found.

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/**
 * @Route("/comment/{postSlug}/new", name="comment_new")
 */
public function new(Request $request, $postSlug)
{
    $post = $this->getDoctrine()
        ->getRepository(Post::class)
        ->findOneBy(['slug' => $postSlug]);

    if (!$post) {
        throw $this->createNotFoundException();
    }

    // ...
}

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use App\Entity\Post;
use Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\ParamConverter;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Annotation\Route;

/**
 * @Route("/comment/{postSlug}/new", name="comment_new")
 * @ParamConverter("post", options={"mapping"={"postSlug"="slug"}})
 */
public function new(Request $request, Post $post)
{
    // ...
}

Pre and Post Hooks

If you need to execute some code before or after the execution of your controllers, you can use the EventDispatcher component to set up before and after filters.

Next: Templates