Overriding a Form Type¶

The default forms packaged with the FOSUserBundle provide functionality for registering new user, updating your profile, changing your password and much more. These forms work well with the bundle's default classes and controllers. But, as you start to add more properties to your User class or you decide you want to add a few options to the registration form you will find that you need to override the forms in the bundle.

Suppose that you have created an ORM user class with the following class name, AppBundle\Entity\User. In this class, you have added a name property because you would like to save the user's name as well as their username and email address. Now, when a user registers for your site they should enter in their name as well as their username, email and password. Below is an example $name property and its validators.

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// src/AppBundle/Entity/User.php

use FOS\UserBundle\Model\User as BaseUser;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

class User extends BaseUser
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    protected $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string", length=255)
     *
     * @Assert\NotBlank(message="Please enter your name.", groups={"Registration", "Profile"})
     * @Assert\Length(
     *     min=3,
     *     max=255,
     *     minMessage="The name is too short.",
     *     maxMessage="The name is too long.",
     *     groups={"Registration", "Profile"}
     * )
     */
    protected $name;

    // ...
}

If you try and register using the default registration form you will find that your new name property is not part of the form. You need to create a custom form type and configure the bundle to use it.

The first step is to create a new form type in your own bundle. The following class inherits from the base FOSUserBundle fos_user_registration type using the form type hierarchy and then adds the custom name field.

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<?php
// src/AppBundle/Form/RegistrationType.php

namespace AppBundle\Form;

use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;

class RegistrationType extends AbstractType
{
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder->add('name');
    }

    public function getParent()
    {
        return 'FOS\UserBundle\Form\Type\RegistrationFormType';

        // Or for Symfony < 2.8
        // return 'fos_user_registration';
    }

    public function getBlockPrefix()
    {
        return 'app_user_registration';
    }

    // For Symfony 2.x
    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->getBlockPrefix();
    }
}

Now that you have created your custom form type, you must declare it as a service and add a tag to it. The tag must have a name value of form.type and an alias value that is the equal to the string returned from the getName method of your form type class. The alias that you specify is what you will use in the FOSUserBundle configuration to let the bundle know that you want to use your custom form.

Below is an example of configuring your form type as a service:

Finally, you must update the configuration of the FOSUserBundle so that it will use your form type instead of the default one. Below is the configuration for changing the registration form type in YAML.

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# app/config/config.yml
fos_user:
    # ...
    registration:
        form:
            type: AppBundle\Form\RegistrationType
            # if you are using Symfony < 2.8 you should use the type name instead
            # type: app_user_registration

Note how the alias value used in your form type's service configuration tag is used in the bundle configuration to tell the FOSUserBundle to use your custom form type.