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How to Access Services or Config from Inside a Form

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How to Access Services or Config from Inside a Form

Sometimes, you may need to access a service or other configuration from inside of your form class. To do this, you have 2 options:

1) Pass Options to your Form

The simplest way to pass services or configuration to your form is via form options. Suppose you need to access the Doctrine entity manager so that you can make a query. First, allow (in fact, require) a new entity_manager option to be passed to your form:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    // ...

    public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
    {
        // ...

        $resolver->setRequired('entity_manager');
    }
}

Now that you've done this, you must pass an entity_manager option when you create your form:

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// src/AppBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
use AppBundle\Form\TaskType;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;

// ...
public function newAction(EntityManagerInterface $em)
{
    // or fetch the em via the container
    // $em = $this->get('doctrine')->getManager();

    $task = ...;
    $form = $this->createForm(TaskType::class, $task, array(
        'entity_manager' => $em,
    ));

    // ...
}

Finally, the entity_manager option is accessible in the $options argument of your buildForm() method:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        /** @var \Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager $em */
        $em = $options['entity_manager'];
        // ...
    }

    // ...
}

Use this method to pass anything to your form.

2) Define your Form as a Service

Alternatively, you can define your form class as a service. This is a good idea if you want to re-use the form in several places - registering it as a service makes this easier.

Suppose you need to access the EntityManager object so that you can make a query. First, add this as an argument to your form class:

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// src/AppBundle/Form/TaskType.php

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
// ...

class TaskType extends AbstractType
{
    private $em;

    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $em)
    {
        $this->em = $em;
    }

    // ...
}

If you're using autowire and autoconfigure, then you don't need to do anything else: Symfony will automatically know to pass the correct EntityManager object to your __construct() method.

If you are not using autowire and autoconfigure, register your form as a service manually and tag it with form.type:

  • YAML
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    # src/AppBundle/Resources/config/services.yml
services:
    AppBundle\Form\TaskType:
        arguments: ['@doctrine.orm.entity_manager']
        tags: [form.type]
  • XML
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    <!-- src/AppBundle/Resources/config/services.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <service id="AppBundle\Form\TaskType">
            <argument type="service" id="doctrine.orm.entity_manager"/>
            <tag name="form.type" />
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
  • PHP
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    // src/AppBundle/Resources/config/services.php
use AppBundle\Form\TaskType;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

$container->register(TaskType::class)
    ->addArgument(new Reference('doctrine.orm.entity_manager'))
    ->addTag('form.type')
;

New in version 3.3: Prior to Symfony 3.3, you needed to define form type services as public. Starting from Symfony 3.3, you can also define them as private.

That's it! Your controller - where you create the form - doesn't need to change at all: Symfony is smart enough to load the TaskType from the container.

Read Accessing Services and Config for more information.

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