The HttpKernel Component

Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.x, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.1 (the current stable version).

The HttpKernel component provides a structured process for converting a Request into a Response by making use of the EventDispatcher component. It's flexible enough to create a full-stack framework (Symfony), a micro-framework (Silex) or an advanced CMS system (Drupal).

Installation

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$ composer require symfony/http-kernel

Note

If you install this component outside of a Symfony application, you must require the vendor/autoload.php file in your code to enable the class autoloading mechanism provided by Composer. Read this article for more details.

The Workflow of a Request

See also

This article explains how to use the HttpKernel features as an independent component in any PHP application. In Symfony applications everything is already configured and ready to use. Read the Controller and Events and Event Listeners articles to learn about how to use it to create controllers and define events in Symfony applications.

Every HTTP web interaction begins with a request and ends with a response. Your job as a developer is to create PHP code that reads the request information (e.g. the URL) and creates and returns a response (e.g. an HTML page or JSON string). This is a simplified overview of the request workflow in Symfony applications:

  1. The user asks for a resource in a browser;
  2. The browser sends a request to the server;
  3. Symfony gives the application a Request object;
  4. The application generates a Response object using the data of the Request object;
  5. The server sends back the response to the browser;
  6. The browser displays the resource to the user.

Typically, some sort of framework or system is built to handle all the repetitive tasks (e.g. routing, security, etc) so that a developer can build each page of the application. Exactly how these systems are built varies greatly. The HttpKernel component provides an interface that formalizes the process of starting with a request and creating the appropriate response. The component is meant to be the heart of any application or framework, no matter how varied the architecture of that system:

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namespace Symfony\Component\HttpKernel;

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

interface HttpKernelInterface
{
    // ...

    /**
     * @return Response A Response instance
     */
    public function handle(
        Request $request,
        $type = self::MASTER_REQUEST,
        $catch = true
    );
}

Internally, HttpKernel::handle() - the concrete implementation of HttpKernelInterface::handle() - defines a workflow that starts with a Request and ends with a Response.

The exact details of this workflow are the key to understanding how the kernel (and the Symfony Framework or any other library that uses the kernel) works.

HttpKernel: Driven by Events

The HttpKernel::handle() method works internally by dispatching events. This makes the method both flexible, but also a bit abstract, since all the "work" of a framework/application built with HttpKernel is actually done in event listeners.

To help explain this process, this document looks at each step of the process and talks about how one specific implementation of the HttpKernel - the Symfony Framework - works.

Initially, using the HttpKernel does not take many steps. You create an event dispatcher and a controller and argument resolver (explained below). To complete your working kernel, you'll add more event listeners to the events discussed below:

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use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventDispatcher;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller\ArgumentResolver;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller\ControllerResolver;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel;

// create the Request object
$request = Request::createFromGlobals();

$dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();
// ... add some event listeners

// create your controller and argument resolvers
$controllerResolver = new ControllerResolver();
$argumentResolver = new ArgumentResolver();

// instantiate the kernel
$kernel = new HttpKernel($dispatcher, $controllerResolver, new RequestStack(), $argumentResolver);

// actually execute the kernel, which turns the request into a response
// by dispatching events, calling a controller, and returning the response
$response = $kernel->handle($request);

// send the headers and echo the content
$response->send();

// trigger the kernel.terminate event
$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

See "The HttpKernel Component" for a more concrete implementation.

For general information on adding listeners to the events below, see The HttpKernel Component.

Caution

As of 3.1 the HttpKernel accepts a fourth argument, which must be an instance of ArgumentResolverInterface. In 4.0 this argument will become mandatory.

See also

There is a wonderful tutorial series on using the HttpKernel component and other Symfony components to create your own framework. See Introduction.

1) The kernel.request Event

Typical Purposes: To add more information to the Request, initialize parts of the system, or return a Response if possible (e.g. a security layer that denies access).

Kernel Events Information Table

The first event that is dispatched inside HttpKernel::handle is kernel.request, which may have a variety of different listeners.

Listeners of this event can be quite varied. Some listeners - such as a security listener - might have enough information to create a Response object immediately. For example, if a security listener determined that a user doesn't have access, that listener may return a RedirectResponse to the login page or a 403 Access Denied response.

If a Response is returned at this stage, the process skips directly to the kernel.response event.

Other listeners initialize things or add more information to the request. For example, a listener might determine and set the locale on the Request object.

Another common listener is routing. A router listener may process the Request and determine the controller that should be rendered (see the next section). In fact, the Request object has an "attributes" bag which is a perfect spot to store this extra, application-specific data about the request. This means that if your router listener somehow determines the controller, it can store it on the Request attributes (which can be used by your controller resolver).

Overall, the purpose of the kernel.request event is either to create and return a Response directly, or to add information to the Request (e.g. setting the locale or setting some other information on the Request attributes).

Note

When setting a response for the kernel.request event, the propagation is stopped. This means listeners with lower priority won't be executed.

kernel.request in the Symfony Framework

The most important listener to kernel.request in the Symfony Framework is the RouterListener. This class executes the routing layer, which returns an array of information about the matched request, including the _controller and any placeholders that are in the route's pattern (e.g. {slug}). See the Routing documentation.

This array of information is stored in the Request object's attributes array. Adding the routing information here doesn't do anything yet, but is used next when resolving the controller.

2) Resolve the Controller

Assuming that no kernel.request listener was able to create a Response, the next step in HttpKernel is to determine and prepare (i.e. resolve) the controller. The controller is the part of the end-application's code that is responsible for creating and returning the Response for a specific page. The only requirement is that it is a PHP callable - i.e. a function, method on an object or a Closure.

But how you determine the exact controller for a request is entirely up to your application. This is the job of the "controller resolver" - a class that implements ControllerResolverInterface and is one of the constructor arguments to HttpKernel.

Your job is to create a class that implements the interface and fill in its method: getController(). In fact, one default implementation already exists, which you can use directly or learn from: ControllerResolver. This implementation is explained more in the sidebar below:

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namespace Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller;

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

interface ControllerResolverInterface
{
    public function getController(Request $request);
}

Internally, the HttpKernel::handle() method first calls getController() on the controller resolver. This method is passed the Request and is responsible for somehow determining and returning a PHP callable (the controller) based on the request's information.

Resolving the Controller in the Symfony Framework

The Symfony Framework uses the built-in ControllerResolver class (actually, it uses a subclass with some extra functionality mentioned below). This class leverages the information that was placed on the Request object's attributes property during the RouterListener.

getController

The ControllerResolver looks for a _controller key on the Request object's attributes property (recall that this information is typically placed on the Request via the RouterListener). This string is then transformed into a PHP callable by doing the following:

a) If the _controller key doesn't follow the recommended PHP namespace
format (e.g. App\Controller\DefaultController::index) its format is transformed into it. For example, the legacy FooBundle:Default:index format would be changed to Acme\FooBundle\Controller\DefaultController::indexAction. This transformation is specific to the ControllerResolver sub-class used by the Symfony Framework.
b) A new instance of your controller class is instantiated with no
constructor arguments.
c) If the controller implements ContainerAwareInterface,
setContainer() is called on the controller object and the container is passed to it. This step is also specific to the ControllerResolver sub-class used by the Symfony Framework.

3) The kernel.controller Event

Typical Purposes: Initialize things or change the controller just before the controller is executed.

Kernel Events Information Table

After the controller callable has been determined, HttpKernel::handle() dispatches the kernel.controller event. Listeners to this event might initialize some part of the system that needs to be initialized after certain things have been determined (e.g. the controller, routing information) but before the controller is executed. For some examples, see the Symfony section below.

Listeners to this event can also change the controller callable completely by calling ControllerEvent::setController on the event object that's passed to listeners on this event.

kernel.controller in the Symfony Framework

There are a few minor listeners to the kernel.controller event in the Symfony Framework, and many deal with collecting profiler data when the profiler is enabled.

One interesting listener comes from the SensioFrameworkExtraBundle. This listener's @ParamConverter functionality allows you to pass a full object (e.g. a Post object) to your controller instead of a scalar value (e.g. an id parameter that was on your route). The listener - ParamConverterListener - uses reflection to look at each of the arguments of the controller and tries to use different methods to convert those to objects, which are then stored in the attributes property of the Request object. Read the next section to see why this is important.

4) Getting the Controller Arguments

Next, HttpKernel::handle() calls ArgumentResolverInterface::getArguments(). Remember that the controller returned in getController() is a callable. The purpose of getArguments() is to return the array of arguments that should be passed to that controller. Exactly how this is done is completely up to your design, though the built-in ArgumentResolver is a good example.

At this point the kernel has a PHP callable (the controller) and an array of arguments that should be passed when executing that callable.

Getting the Controller Arguments in the Symfony Framework

Now that you know exactly what the controller callable (usually a method inside a controller object) is, the ArgumentResolver uses reflection on the callable to return an array of the names of each of the arguments. It then iterates over each of these arguments and uses the following tricks to determine which value should be passed for each argument:

a) If the Request attributes bag contains a key that matches the name
of the argument, that value is used. For example, if the first argument to a controller is $slug and there is a slug key in the Request attributes bag, that value is used (and typically this value came from the RouterListener).
b) If the argument in the controller is type-hinted with Symfony's
Request object, the Request is passed in as the value.
c) If the function or method argument is variadic and the Request
attributes bag contains an array for that argument, they will all be available through the variadic argument.

This functionality is provided by resolvers implementing the ArgumentValueResolverInterface. There are four implementations which provide the default behavior of Symfony but customization is the key here. By implementing the ArgumentValueResolverInterface yourself and passing this to the ArgumentResolver, you can extend this functionality.

5) Calling the Controller

The next step of HttpKernel::handle() is executing the controller.

The job of the controller is to build the response for the given resource. This could be an HTML page, a JSON string or anything else. Unlike every other part of the process so far, this step is implemented by the "end-developer", for each page that is built.

Usually, the controller will return a Response object. If this is true, then the work of the kernel is just about done! In this case, the next step is the kernel.response event.

But if the controller returns anything besides a Response, then the kernel has a little bit more work to do - kernel.view (since the end goal is always to generate a Response object).

Note

A controller must return something. If a controller returns null, an exception will be thrown immediately.

6) The kernel.view Event

Typical Purposes: Transform a non-Response return value from a controller into a Response

Kernel Events Information Table

If the controller doesn't return a Response object, then the kernel dispatches another event - kernel.view. The job of a listener to this event is to use the return value of the controller (e.g. an array of data or an object) to create a Response.

This can be useful if you want to use a "view" layer: instead of returning a Response from the controller, you return data that represents the page. A listener to this event could then use this data to create a Response that is in the correct format (e.g HTML, JSON, etc).

At this stage, if no listener sets a response on the event, then an exception is thrown: either the controller or one of the view listeners must always return a Response.

Note

When setting a response for the kernel.view event, the propagation is stopped. This means listeners with lower priority won't be executed.

kernel.view in the Symfony Framework

There is no default listener inside the Symfony Framework for the kernel.view event. However, SensioFrameworkExtraBundle does add a listener to this event. If your controller returns an array, and you place the @Template annotation above the controller, then this listener renders a template, passes the array you returned from your controller to that template, and creates a Response containing the returned content from that template.

Additionally, a popular community bundle FOSRestBundle implements a listener on this event which aims to give you a robust view layer capable of using a single controller to return many different content-type responses (e.g. HTML, JSON, XML, etc).

7) The kernel.response Event

Typical Purposes: Modify the Response object just before it is sent

Kernel Events Information Table

The end goal of the kernel is to transform a Request into a Response. The Response might be created during the kernel.request event, returned from the controller, or returned by one of the listeners to the kernel.view event.

Regardless of who creates the Response, another event - kernel.response is dispatched directly afterwards. A typical listener to this event will modify the Response object in some way, such as modifying headers, adding cookies, or even changing the content of the Response itself (e.g. injecting some JavaScript before the end </body> tag of an HTML response).

After this event is dispatched, the final Response object is returned from handle(). In the most typical use-case, you can then call the send() method, which sends the headers and prints the Response content.

kernel.response in the Symfony Framework

There are several minor listeners on this event inside the Symfony Framework, and most modify the response in some way. For example, the WebDebugToolbarListener injects some JavaScript at the bottom of your page in the dev environment which causes the web debug toolbar to be displayed. Another listener, ContextListener serializes the current user's information into the session so that it can be reloaded on the next request.

8) The kernel.terminate Event

Typical Purposes: To perform some "heavy" action after the response has been streamed to the user

Kernel Events Information Table

The final event of the HttpKernel process is kernel.terminate and is unique because it occurs after the HttpKernel::handle() method, and after the response is sent to the user. Recall from above, then the code that uses the kernel, ends like this:

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// sends the headers and echoes the content
$response->send();

// triggers the kernel.terminate event
$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

As you can see, by calling $kernel->terminate after sending the response, you will trigger the kernel.terminate event where you can perform certain actions that you may have delayed in order to return the response as quickly as possible to the client (e.g. sending emails).

Caution

Internally, the HttpKernel makes use of the fastcgi_finish_request PHP function. This means that at the moment, only the PHP FPM server API is able to send a response to the client while the server's PHP process still performs some tasks. With all other server APIs, listeners to kernel.terminate are still executed, but the response is not sent to the client until they are all completed.

Note

Using the kernel.terminate event is optional, and should only be called if your kernel implements TerminableInterface.

Handling Exceptions: the kernel.exception Event

Typical Purposes: Handle some type of exception and create an appropriate Response to return for the exception

Kernel Events Information Table

If an exception is thrown at any point inside HttpKernel::handle(), another event - kernel.exception is dispatched. Internally, the body of the handle() method is wrapped in a try-catch block. When any exception is thrown, the kernel.exception event is dispatched so that your system can somehow respond to the exception.

Each listener to this event is passed a ExceptionEvent object, which you can use to access the original exception via the getThrowable() method. A typical listener on this event will check for a certain type of exception and create an appropriate error Response.

4.4

The getThrowable() and setThrowable() methods were introduced in Symfony 4.4.

4.4

The getException() and setException() methods are deprecated since Symfony 4.4.

For example, to generate a 404 page, you might throw a special type of exception and then add a listener on this event that looks for this exception and creates and returns a 404 Response. In fact, the HttpKernel component comes with an ExceptionListener, which if you choose to use, will do this and more by default (see the sidebar below for more details).

Note

When setting a response for the kernel.exception event, the propagation is stopped. This means listeners with lower priority won't be executed.

kernel.exception in the Symfony Framework

There are two main listeners to kernel.exception when using the Symfony Framework.

ExceptionListener in the HttpKernel Component

The first comes core to the HttpKernel component and is called ExceptionListener. The listener has several goals:

  1. The thrown exception is converted into a FlattenException object, which contains all the information about the request, but which can be printed and serialized.
  2. If the original exception implements HttpExceptionInterface, then getStatusCode() and getHeaders() are called on the exception and used to populate the headers and status code of the FlattenException object. The idea is that these are used in the next step when creating the final response. If you want to set custom HTTP headers, you can always use the setHeaders() method on exceptions derived from the HttpException class.
  3. If the original exception implements RequestExceptionInterface, then the status code of the FlattenException object is populated with 400 and no other headers are modified.
  4. A controller is executed and passed the flattened exception. The exact controller to render is passed as a constructor argument to this listener. This controller will return the final Response for this error page.

ExceptionListener in the Security Component

The other important listener is the ExceptionListener. The goal of this listener is to handle security exceptions and, when appropriate, help the user to authenticate (e.g. redirect to the login page).

Creating an Event Listener

As you've seen, you can create and attach event listeners to any of the events dispatched during the HttpKernel::handle() cycle. Typically a listener is a PHP class with a method that's executed, but it can be anything. For more information on creating and attaching event listeners, see The EventDispatcher Component.

The name of each of the "kernel" events is defined as a constant on the KernelEvents class. Additionally, each event listener is passed a single argument, which is some subclass of KernelEvent. This object contains information about the current state of the system and each event has their own event object:

Name KernelEvents Constant Argument passed to the listener
kernel.request KernelEvents::REQUEST RequestEvent
kernel.controller KernelEvents::CONTROLLER ControllerEvent
kernel.controller_arguments KernelEvents::CONTROLLER_ARGUMENTS ControllerArgumentsEvent
kernel.view KernelEvents::VIEW ViewEvent
kernel.response KernelEvents::RESPONSE ResponseEvent
kernel.finish_request KernelEvents::FINISH_REQUEST FinishRequestEvent
kernel.terminate KernelEvents::TERMINATE TerminateEvent
kernel.exception KernelEvents::EXCEPTION ExceptionEvent

4.3

Since Symfony 4.3, most of the event classes were renamed. The following old classes were deprecated:

A full Working Example

When using the HttpKernel component, you're free to attach any listeners to the core events, use any controller resolver that implements the ControllerResolverInterface and use any argument resolver that implements the ArgumentResolverInterface. However, the HttpKernel component comes with some built-in listeners and everything else that can be used to create a working example:

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use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventDispatcher;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller\ArgumentResolver;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Controller\ControllerResolver;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\EventListener\RouterListener;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Matcher\UrlMatcher;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\RequestContext;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Route;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\RouteCollection;

$routes = new RouteCollection();
$routes->add('hello', new Route('/hello/{name}', [
    '_controller' => function (Request $request) {
        return new Response(
            sprintf("Hello %s", $request->get('name'))
        );
    }]
));

$request = Request::createFromGlobals();

$matcher = new UrlMatcher($routes, new RequestContext());

$dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();
$dispatcher->addSubscriber(new RouterListener($matcher, new RequestStack()));

$controllerResolver = new ControllerResolver();
$argumentResolver = new ArgumentResolver();

$kernel = new HttpKernel($dispatcher, $controllerResolver, new RequestStack(), $argumentResolver);

$response = $kernel->handle($request);
$response->send();

$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

Sub Requests

In addition to the "main" request that's sent into HttpKernel::handle(), you can also send a so-called "sub request". A sub request looks and acts like any other request, but typically serves to render just one small portion of a page instead of a full page. You'll most commonly make sub-requests from your controller (or perhaps from inside a template, that's being rendered by your controller).

To execute a sub request, use HttpKernel::handle(), but change the second argument as follows:

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use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernelInterface;

// ...

// create some other request manually as needed
$request = new Request();
// for example, possibly set its _controller manually
$request->attributes->set('_controller', '...');

$response = $kernel->handle($request, HttpKernelInterface::SUB_REQUEST);
// do something with this response

This creates another full request-response cycle where this new Request is transformed into a Response. The only difference internally is that some listeners (e.g. security) may only act upon the master request. Each listener is passed some subclass of KernelEvent, whose isMasterRequest() can be used to check if the current request is a "master" or "sub" request.

For example, a listener that only needs to act on the master request may look like this:

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use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Event\RequestEvent;
// ...

public function onKernelRequest(RequestEvent $event)
{
    if (!$event->isMasterRequest()) {
        return;
    }

    // ...
}

Locating Resources

The HttpKernel component is responsible of the bundle mechanism used in Symfony applications. The key feature of the bundles is that they allow to override any resource used by the application (config files, templates, controllers, translation files, etc.)

This overriding mechanism works because resources are referenced not by their physical path but by their logical path. For example, the services.xml file stored in the Resources/config/ directory of a bundle called FooBundle is referenced as @FooBundle/Resources/config/services.xml. This logical path will work when the application overrides that file and even if you change the directory of FooBundle.

The HttpKernel component provides a method called locateResource() which can be used to transform logical paths into physical paths:

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$path = $kernel->locateResource('@FooBundle/Resources/config/services.xml');

Learn more

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