Symfony
sponsored by SensioLabs
Menu
  • About
  • Documentation
  • Screencasts
  • Cloud
  • Certification
  • Community
  • Businesses
  • News
  • Download
  1. Home
  2. Documentation
  3. Templating
  4. How to Embed Controllers in a Template
  • Documentation
  • Book
  • Reference
  • Bundles
  • Cloud
Search by Algolia

How to Embed Controllers in a Template

Edit this page

Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.1, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.2 (the current stable version).

How to Embed Controllers in a Template

Note

Rendering embedded controllers is "heavier" than including a template or calling a custom Twig function. Unless you're planning on caching the fragment, avoid embedding many controllers.

Including template fragments is useful to reuse the same content on several pages. However, this technique is not the best solution in some cases.

Consider a website that displays on its sidebar the most recently published articles. This list of articles is dynamic and it's probably the result of a database query. In other words, the controller of any page that displays that sidebar must make the same database query and pass the list of articles to the included template fragment.

The alternative solution proposed by Symfony is to create a controller that only displays the list of recent articles and then call to that controller from any template that needs to display that content.

First, create a controller that renders a certain number of recent articles:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
// src/Controller/ArticleController.php
namespace App\Controller;

// ...

class ArticleController extends AbstractController
{
    public function recentArticles($max = 3)
    {
        // make a database call or other logic
        // to get the "$max" most recent articles
        $articles = ...;

        return $this->render(
            'article/recent_list.html.twig',
            ['articles' => $articles]
        );
    }
}

Then, create a recent_list template fragment to list the articles given by the controller:

1
2
3
4
5
6
{# templates/article/recent_list.html.twig #}
{% for article in articles %}
    <a href="{{ path('article_show', {slug: article.slug}) }}">
        {{ article.title }}
    </a>
{% endfor %}

Finally, call the controller from any template using the render() function and the standard string syntax for controllers (i.e. controllerNamespace::action):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
{# templates/base.html.twig #}

{# ... #}
<div id="sidebar">
    {{ render(controller(
        'App\\Controller\\ArticleController::recentArticles',
        { 'max': 3 }
    )) }}
</div>
This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.
We stand with Ukraine.
Version:
Code consumes server resources. Blackfire tells you how

Code consumes server resources. Blackfire tells you how

Peruse our complete Symfony & PHP solutions catalog for your web development needs.

Peruse our complete Symfony & PHP solutions catalog for your web development needs.

↓ Our footer now uses the colors of the Ukrainian flag because Symfony stands with the people of Ukraine.

Avatar of Tobias Weinert, a Symfony contributor

Thanks Tobias Weinert (@tweini) for being a Symfony contributor

1 commit • 3 lines changed

View all contributors that help us make Symfony

Become a Symfony contributor

Be an active part of the community and contribute ideas, code and bug fixes. Both experts and newcomers are welcome.

Learn how to contribute

Symfony™ is a trademark of Symfony SAS. All rights reserved.

  • What is Symfony?
    • Symfony at a Glance
    • Symfony Components
    • Case Studies
    • Symfony Releases
    • Security Policy
    • Logo & Screenshots
    • Trademark & Licenses
    • symfony1 Legacy
  • Learn Symfony
    • Symfony Docs
    • Symfony Book
    • Reference
    • Bundles
    • Best Practices
    • Training
    • eLearning Platform
    • Certification
  • Screencasts
    • Learn Symfony
    • Learn PHP
    • Learn JavaScript
    • Learn Drupal
    • Learn RESTful APIs
  • Community
    • SymfonyConnect
    • Support
    • How to be Involved
    • Code of Conduct
    • Events & Meetups
    • Projects using Symfony
    • Downloads Stats
    • Contributors
    • Backers
  • Blog
    • Events & Meetups
    • A week of symfony
    • Case studies
    • Cloud
    • Community
    • Conferences
    • Diversity
    • Documentation
    • Living on the edge
    • Releases
    • Security Advisories
    • SymfonyInsight
    • Twig
    • SensioLabs
  • Services
    • SensioLabs services
    • Train developers
    • Manage your project quality
    • Improve your project performance
    • Host Symfony projects
    Deployed on
Follow Symfony
Search by Algolia