Routing
When your application receives a request, it calls a
controller action to generate the response. The routing
configuration defines which action to run for each incoming URL. It also
provides other useful features, like generating SEO-friendly URLs (e.g.
/read/intro-to-symfony
instead of index.php?article_id=57
).
Creating Routes
Routes can be configured in YAML, XML, PHP or using attributes. All formats provide the same features and performance, so choose your favorite. Symfony recommends attributes because it's convenient to put the route and controller in the same place.
Creating Routes as Attributes
PHP attributes allow to define routes next to the code of the controllers associated to those routes. Attributes are native in PHP 8 and higher versions, so you can use them right away.
You need to add a bit of configuration to your project before using them. If your project uses Symfony Flex, this file is already created for you. Otherwise, create the following file manually:
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# config/routes/attributes.yaml
controllers:
resource:
path: ../../src/Controller/
namespace: App\Controller
type: attribute
kernel:
resource: App\Kernel
type: attribute
This configuration tells Symfony to look for routes defined as attributes on
classes declared in the App\Controller
namespace and stored in the
src/Controller/
directory which follows the PSR-4 standard. The kernel can
act as a controller too, which is especially useful for small applications that
use Symfony as a microframework.
Suppose you want to define a route for the /blog
URL in your application. To
do so, create a controller class like the following:
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// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog', name: 'blog_list')]
public function list(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
This configuration defines a route called blog_list
that matches when the
user requests the /blog
URL. When the match occurs, the application runs
the list()
method of the BlogController
class.
Note
The query string of a URL is not considered when matching routes. In this
example, URLs like /blog?foo=bar
and /blog?foo=bar&bar=foo
will
also match the blog_list
route.
Caution
If you define multiple PHP classes in the same file, Symfony only loads the routes of the first class, ignoring all the other routes.
The route name (blog_list
) is not important for now, but it will be
essential later when generating URLs. You only
have to keep in mind that each route name must be unique in the application.
Creating Routes in YAML, XML or PHP Files
Instead of defining routes in the controller classes, you can define them in a separate YAML, XML or PHP file. The main advantage is that they don't require any extra dependency. The main drawback is that you have to work with multiple files when checking the routing of some controller action.
The following example shows how to define in YAML/XML/PHP a route called
blog_list
that associates the /blog
URL with the list()
action of
the BlogController
:
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# config/routes.yaml
blog_list:
path: /blog
# the controller value has the format 'controller_class::method_name'
controller: App\Controller\BlogController::list
# if the action is implemented as the __invoke() method of the
# controller class, you can skip the '::method_name' part:
# controller: App\Controller\BlogController
Note
By default, Symfony loads the routes defined in both YAML and PHP formats. If you define routes in XML format, you need to update the src/Kernel.php file.
Matching HTTP Methods
By default, routes match any HTTP verb (GET
, POST
, PUT
, etc.)
Use the methods
option to restrict the verbs each route should respond to:
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// src/Controller/BlogApiController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogApiController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/api/posts/{id}', methods: ['GET', 'HEAD'])]
public function show(int $id): Response
{
// ... return a JSON response with the post
}
#[Route('/api/posts/{id}', methods: ['PUT'])]
public function edit(int $id): Response
{
// ... edit a post
}
}
Tip
HTML forms only support GET
and POST
methods. If you're calling a
route with a different method from an HTML form, add a hidden field called
_method
with the method to use (e.g. <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT">
).
If you create your forms with Symfony Forms this is done
automatically for you when the framework.http_method_override
option is true
.
Matching Expressions
Use the condition
option if you need some route to match based on some
arbitrary matching logic:
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// src/Controller/DefaultController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class DefaultController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route(
'/contact',
name: 'contact',
condition: "context.getMethod() in ['GET', 'HEAD'] and request.headers.get('User-Agent') matches '/firefox/i'",
// expressions can also include config parameters:
// condition: "request.headers.get('User-Agent') matches '%app.allowed_browsers%'"
)]
public function contact(): Response
{
// ...
}
#[Route(
'/posts/{id}',
name: 'post_show',
// expressions can retrieve route parameter values using the "params" variable
condition: "params['id'] < 1000"
)]
public function showPost(int $id): Response
{
// ... return a JSON response with the post
}
}
The value of the condition
option is an expression using any valid
expression language syntax and
can use any of these variables created by Symfony:
context
- An instance of RequestContext, which holds the most fundamental information about the route being matched.
request
- The Symfony Request object that represents the current request.
params
- An array of matched route parameters for the current route.
You can also use these functions:
env(string $name)
- Returns the value of a variable using Environment Variable Processors
service(string $alias)
-
Returns a routing condition service.
First, add the
#[AsRoutingConditionService]
attribute orrouting.condition_service
tag to the services that you want to use in route conditions:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Routing\Attribute\AsRoutingConditionService; use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request; #[AsRoutingConditionService(alias: 'route_checker')] class RouteChecker { public function check(Request $request): bool { // ... } }
Then, use the
service()
function to refer to that service inside conditions:1 2 3 4
// Controller (using an alias): #[Route(condition: "service('route_checker').check(request)")] // Or without alias: #[Route(condition: "service('App\\\Service\\\RouteChecker').check(request)")]
Behind the scenes, expressions are compiled down to raw PHP. Because of this,
using the condition
key causes no extra overhead beyond the time it takes
for the underlying PHP to execute.
Caution
Conditions are not taken into account when generating URLs (which is explained later in this article).
Debugging Routes
As your application grows, you'll eventually have a lot of routes. Symfony
includes some commands to help you debug routing issues. First, the debug:router
command lists all your application routes in the same order in which Symfony
evaluates them:
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$ php bin/console debug:router
---------------- ------- ------- ----- --------------------------------------------
Name Method Scheme Host Path
---------------- ------- ------- ----- --------------------------------------------
homepage ANY ANY ANY /
contact GET ANY ANY /contact
contact_process POST ANY ANY /contact
article_show ANY ANY ANY /articles/{_locale}/{year}/{title}.{_format}
blog ANY ANY ANY /blog/{page}
blog_show ANY ANY ANY /blog/{slug}
---------------- ------- ------- ----- --------------------------------------------
Pass the name (or part of the name) of some route to this argument to print the route details:
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$ php bin/console debug:router app_lucky_number
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Property | Value |
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Route Name | app_lucky_number |
| Path | /lucky/number/{max} |
| ... | ... |
| Options | compiler_class: Symfony\Component\Routing\RouteCompiler |
| | utf8: true |
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------+
Tip
Use the --show-aliases
option to show all available aliases for a given
route.
The other command is called router:match
and it shows which route will match
the given URL. It's useful to find out why some URL is not executing the
controller action that you expect:
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$ php bin/console router:match /lucky/number/8
[OK] Route "app_lucky_number" matches
Route Parameters
The previous examples defined routes where the URL never changes (e.g. /blog
).
However, it's common to define routes where some parts are variable. For example,
the URL to display some blog post will probably include the title or slug
(e.g. /blog/my-first-post
or /blog/all-about-symfony
).
In Symfony routes, variable parts are wrapped in { }
.
For example, the route to display the blog post contents is defined as /blog/{slug}
:
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// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
// ...
#[Route('/blog/{slug}', name: 'blog_show')]
public function show(string $slug): Response
{
// $slug will equal the dynamic part of the URL
// e.g. at /blog/yay-routing, then $slug='yay-routing'
// ...
}
}
The name of the variable part ({slug}
in this example) is used to create a
PHP variable where that route content is stored and passed to the controller.
If a user visits the /blog/my-first-post
URL, Symfony executes the show()
method in the BlogController
class and passes a $slug = 'my-first-post'
argument to the show()
method.
Routes can define any number of parameters, but each of them can only be used
once on each route (e.g. /blog/posts-about-{category}/page/{pageNumber}
).
Parameters Validation
Imagine that your application has a blog_show
route (URL: /blog/{slug}
)
and a blog_list
route (URL: /blog/{page}
). Given that route parameters
accept any value, there's no way to differentiate both routes.
If the user requests /blog/my-first-post
, both routes will match and Symfony
will use the route which was defined first. To fix this, add some validation to
the {page}
parameter using the requirements
option:
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// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog/{page}', name: 'blog_list', requirements: ['page' => '\d+'])]
public function list(int $page): Response
{
// ...
}
#[Route('/blog/{slug}', name: 'blog_show')]
public function show($slug): Response
{
// ...
}
}
The requirements
option defines the PHP regular expressions that route
parameters must match for the entire route to match. In this example, \d+
is
a regular expression that matches a digit of any length. Now:
URL | Route | Parameters |
---|---|---|
/blog/2 |
blog_list |
$page = 2 |
/blog/my-first-post |
blog_show |
$slug = my-first-post |
Tip
The Requirement enum contains a collection of commonly used regular-expression constants such as digits, dates and UUIDs which can be used as route parameter requirements.
Tip
Route requirements (and route paths too) can include configuration parameters, which is useful to define complex regular expressions once and reuse them in multiple routes.
Tip
Parameters also support PCRE Unicode properties, which are escape
sequences that match generic character types. For example, \p{Lu}
matches any uppercase character in any language, \p{Greek}
matches any
Greek characters, etc.
Note
When using regular expressions in route parameters, you can set the utf8
route option to true
to make any .
character match any UTF-8
characters instead of just a single byte.
If you prefer, requirements can be inlined in each parameter using the syntax
{parameter_name<requirements>}
. This feature makes configuration more
concise, but it can decrease route readability when requirements are complex:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog/{page<\d+>}', name: 'blog_list')]
public function list(int $page): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Optional Parameters
In the previous example, the URL of blog_list
is /blog/{page}
. If users
visit /blog/1
, it will match. But if they visit /blog
, it will not
match. As soon as you add a parameter to a route, it must have a value.
You can make blog_list
once again match when the user visits /blog
by
adding a default value for the {page}
parameter. When using attributes,
default values are defined in the arguments of the controller action. In the
other configuration formats they are defined with the defaults
option:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog/{page}', name: 'blog_list', requirements: ['page' => '\d+'])]
public function list(int $page = 1): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Now, when the user visits /blog
, the blog_list
route will match and
$page
will default to a value of 1
.
Caution
You can have more than one optional parameter (e.g. /blog/{slug}/{page}
),
but everything after an optional parameter must be optional. For example,
/{page}/blog
is a valid path, but page
will always be required
(i.e. /blog
will not match this route).
If you want to always include some default value in the generated URL (for
example to force the generation of /blog/1
instead of /blog
in the
previous example) add the !
character before the parameter name: /blog/{!page}
As it happens with requirements, default values can also be inlined in each
parameter using the syntax {parameter_name?default_value}
. This feature
is compatible with inlined requirements, so you can inline both in a single
parameter:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog/{page<\d+>?1}', name: 'blog_list')]
public function list(int $page): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Tip
To give a null
default value to any parameter, add nothing after the
?
character (e.g. /blog/{page?}
). If you do this, don't forget to
update the types of the related controller arguments to allow passing
null
values (e.g. replace int $page
by ?int $page
).
Priority Parameter
Symfony evaluates routes in the order they are defined. If the path of a route
matches many different patterns, it might prevent other routes from being
matched. In YAML and XML you can move the route definitions up or down in the
configuration file to control their priority. In routes defined as PHP
attributes this is much harder to do, so you can set the
optional priority
parameter in those routes to control their priority:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
/**
* This route has a greedy pattern and is defined first.
*/
#[Route('/blog/{slug}', name: 'blog_show')]
public function show(string $slug): Response
{
// ...
}
/**
* This route could not be matched without defining a higher priority than 0.
*/
#[Route('/blog/list', name: 'blog_list', priority: 2)]
public function list(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
The priority parameter expects an integer value. Routes with higher priority
are sorted before routes with lower priority. The default value when it is not
defined is 0
.
Parameter Conversion
A common routing need is to convert the value stored in some parameter (e.g. an integer acting as the user ID) into another value (e.g. the object that represents the user). This feature is called a "param converter".
Now, keep the previous route configuration, but change the arguments of the
controller action. Instead of string $slug
, add BlogPost $post
:
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// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use App\Entity\BlogPost;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
// ...
#[Route('/blog/{slug}', name: 'blog_show')]
public function show(BlogPost $post): Response
{
// $post is the object whose slug matches the routing parameter
// ...
}
}
If your controller arguments include type-hints for objects (BlogPost
in
this case), the "param converter" makes a database request to find the object
using the request parameters (slug
in this case). If no object is found,
Symfony generates a 404 response automatically.
Check out the Doctrine param conversion documentation
to learn about the #[MapEntity]
attribute that can be used to customize the
database queries used to fetch the object from the route parameter.
Backed Enum Parameters
You can use PHP backed enumerations as route parameters because Symfony will convert them automatically to their scalar values.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
// src/Controller/OrderController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use App\Enum\OrderStatusEnum;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class OrderController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/orders/list/{status}', name: 'list_orders_by_status')]
public function list(OrderStatusEnum $status = OrderStatusEnum::Paid): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Special Parameters
In addition to your own parameters, routes can include any of the following special parameters created by Symfony:
_controller
- This parameter is used to determine which controller and action is executed when the route is matched.
_format
-
The matched value is used to set the "request format" of the
Request
object. This is used for such things as setting theContent-Type
of the response (e.g. ajson
format translates into aContent-Type
ofapplication/json
). _fragment
-
Used to set the fragment identifier, which is the optional last part of a URL that
starts with a
#
character and is used to identify a portion of a document. _locale
- Used to set the locale on the request.
You can include these attributes (except _fragment
) both in individual routes
and in route imports. Symfony defines some special attributes with the same name
(except for the leading underscore) so you can define them easier:
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// src/Controller/ArticleController.php
namespace App\Controller;
// ...
class ArticleController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route(
path: '/articles/{_locale}/search.{_format}',
locale: 'en',
format: 'html',
requirements: [
'_locale' => 'en|fr',
'_format' => 'html|xml',
],
)]
public function search(): Response
{
}
}
Extra Parameters
In the defaults
option of a route you can optionally define parameters not
included in the route configuration. This is useful to pass extra arguments to
the controllers of the routes:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog/{page}', name: 'blog_index', defaults: ['page' => 1, 'title' => 'Hello world!'])]
public function index(int $page, string $title): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Slash Characters in Route Parameters
Route parameters can contain any values except the /
slash character,
because that's the character used to separate the different parts of the URLs.
For example, if the token
value in the /share/{token}
route contains a
/
character, this route won't match.
A possible solution is to change the parameter requirements to be more permissive:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/DefaultController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class DefaultController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/share/{token}', name: 'share', requirements: ['token' => '.+'])]
public function share($token): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Note
If the route defines several parameters and you apply this permissive
regular expression to all of them, you might get unexpected results. For
example, if the route definition is /share/{path}/{token}
and both
path
and token
accept /
, then token
will only get the last part
and the rest is matched by path
.
Note
If the route includes the special {_format}
parameter, you shouldn't
use the .+
requirement for the parameters that allow slashes. For example,
if the pattern is /share/{token}.{_format}
and {token}
allows any
character, the /share/foo/bar.json
URL will consider foo/bar.json
as the token and the format will be empty. This can be solved by replacing
the .+
requirement by [^.]+
to allow any character except dots.
Route Aliasing
Route alias allow you to have multiple name for the same route:
1 2 3
# config/routes.yaml
new_route_name:
alias: original_route_name
In this example, both original_route_name
and new_route_name
routes can
be used in the application and will produce the same result.
Deprecating Route Aliases
If some route alias should no longer be used (because it is outdated or you decided not to maintain it anymore), you can deprecate its definition:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
new_route_name:
alias: original_route_name
# this outputs the following generic deprecation message:
# Since acme/package 1.2: The "new_route_name" route alias is deprecated. You should stop using it, as it will be removed in the future.
deprecated:
package: 'acme/package'
version: '1.2'
# you can also define a custom deprecation message (%alias_id% placeholder is available)
deprecated:
package: 'acme/package'
version: '1.2'
message: 'The "%alias_id%" route alias is deprecated. Do not use it anymore.'
In this example, every time the new_route_name
alias is used, a deprecation
warning is triggered, advising you to stop using that alias.
The message is actually a message template, which replaces occurrences of the
%alias_id%
placeholder by the route alias name. You must have
at least one occurrence of the %alias_id%
placeholder in your template.
Route Groups and Prefixes
It's common for a group of routes to share some options (e.g. all routes related
to the blog start with /blog
) That's why Symfony includes a feature to share
route configuration.
When defining routes as attributes, put the common configuration
in the #[Route]
attribute of the controller class.
In other routing formats, define the common configuration using options
when importing the routes.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
#[Route('/blog', requirements: ['_locale' => 'en|es|fr'], name: 'blog_')]
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/{_locale}', name: 'index')]
public function index(): Response
{
// ...
}
#[Route('/{_locale}/posts/{slug}', name: 'show')]
public function show(string $slug): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Caution
The exclude
option only works when the resource
value is a glob string.
If you use a regular string (e.g. '../src/Controller'
) the exclude
value will be ignored.
In this example, the route of the index()
action will be called blog_index
and its URL will be /blog/{_locale}
. The route of the show()
action will be called
blog_show
and its URL will be /blog/{_locale}/posts/{slug}
. Both routes
will also validate that the _locale
parameter matches the regular expression
defined in the class attribute.
Note
If any of the prefixed routes defines an empty path, Symfony adds a trailing
slash to it. In the previous example, an empty path prefixed with /blog
will result in the /blog/
URL. If you want to avoid this behavior, set
the trailing_slash_on_root
option to false
(this option is not
available when using PHP attributes):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# config/routes/attributes.yaml
controllers:
resource: '../../src/Controller/'
type: attribute
prefix: '/blog'
trailing_slash_on_root: false
# ...
See also
Symfony can import routes from different sources and you can even create your own route loader.
Getting the Route Name and Parameters
The Request
object created by Symfony stores all the route configuration
(such as the name and parameters) in the "request attributes". You can get this
information in a controller via the Request
object:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog', name: 'blog_list')]
public function list(Request $request): Response
{
$routeName = $request->attributes->get('_route');
$routeParameters = $request->attributes->get('_route_params');
// use this to get all the available attributes (not only routing ones):
$allAttributes = $request->attributes->all();
// ...
}
}
In services, you can get this information by
injecting the RequestStack service.
In templates, use the Twig global app variable
to get the current route name (app.current_route
) and its parameters
(app.current_route_parameters
).
Special Routes
Symfony defines some special controllers to render templates and redirect to other routes from the route configuration so you don't have to create a controller action.
Rendering a Template Directly from a Route
Read the section about rendering a template from a route in the main article about Symfony templates.
Redirecting to URLs and Routes Directly from a Route
Use the RedirectController
to redirect to other routes and URLs:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
# config/routes.yaml
doc_shortcut:
path: /doc
controller: Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\RedirectController
defaults:
route: 'doc_page'
# optionally you can define some arguments passed to the route
page: 'index'
version: 'current'
# redirections are temporary by default (code 302) but you can make them permanent (code 301)
permanent: true
# add this to keep the original query string parameters when redirecting
keepQueryParams: true
# add this to keep the HTTP method when redirecting. The redirect status changes
# * for temporary redirects, it uses the 307 status code instead of 302
# * for permanent redirects, it uses the 308 status code instead of 301
keepRequestMethod: true
# add this to remove all original route attributes when redirecting
ignoreAttributes: true
# or specify which attributes to ignore:
# ignoreAttributes: ['offset', 'limit']
legacy_doc:
path: /legacy/doc
controller: Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\RedirectController
defaults:
# this value can be an absolute path or an absolute URL
path: 'https://legacy.example.com/doc'
permanent: true
Tip
Symfony also provides some utilities to redirect inside controllers
Redirecting URLs with Trailing Slashes
Historically, URLs have followed the UNIX convention of adding trailing slashes
for directories (e.g. https://example.com/foo/
) and removing them to refer
to files (https://example.com/foo
). Although serving different contents for
both URLs is OK, nowadays it's common to treat both URLs as the same URL and
redirect between them.
Symfony follows this logic to redirect between URLs with and without trailing
slashes (but only for GET
and HEAD
requests):
Route URL | If the requested URL is /foo |
If the requested URL is /foo/ |
---|---|---|
/foo |
It matches (200 status response) |
It makes a 301 redirect to /foo |
/foo/ |
It makes a 301 redirect to /foo/ |
It matches (200 status response) |
Sub-Domain Routing
Routes can configure a host
option to require that the HTTP host of the
incoming requests matches some specific value. In the following example, both
routes match the same path (/
) but one of them only responds to a specific
host name:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
// src/Controller/MainController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class MainController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/', name: 'mobile_homepage', host: 'm.example.com')]
public function mobileHomepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
#[Route('/', name: 'homepage')]
public function homepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
The value of the host
option can include parameters (which is useful in
multi-tenant applications) and these parameters can be validated too with
requirements
:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
// src/Controller/MainController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class MainController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route(
'/',
name: 'mobile_homepage',
host: '{subdomain}.example.com',
defaults: ['subdomain' => 'm'],
requirements: ['subdomain' => 'm|mobile'],
)]
public function mobileHomepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
#[Route('/', name: 'homepage')]
public function homepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
In the above example, the subdomain
parameter defines a default value because
otherwise you need to include a subdomain value each time you generate a URL using
these routes.
Tip
You can also set the host
option when importing routes
to make all of them require that host name.
Note
When using sub-domain routing, you must set the Host
HTTP headers in
functional tests or routes won't match:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
$crawler = $client->request(
'GET',
'/',
[],
[],
['HTTP_HOST' => 'm.example.com']
// or get the value from some configuration parameter:
// ['HTTP_HOST' => 'm.'.$client->getContainer()->getParameter('domain')]
);
Tip
You can also use the inline defaults and requirements format in the
host
option: {subdomain<m|mobile>?m}.example.com
Localized Routes (i18n)
If your application is translated into multiple languages, each route can define a different URL per each translation locale. This avoids the need for duplicating routes, which also reduces the potential bugs:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
// src/Controller/CompanyController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class CompanyController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route(path: [
'en' => '/about-us',
'nl' => '/over-ons'
], name: 'about_us')]
public function about(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Note
When using PHP attributes for localized routes, you have to use the path
named parameter to specify the array of paths.
When a localized route is matched, Symfony uses the same locale automatically during the entire request.
Tip
When the application uses full "language + territory" locales (e.g. fr_FR
,
fr_BE
), if the URLs are the same in all related locales, routes can use
only the language part (e.g. fr
) to avoid repeating the same URLs.
A common requirement for internationalized applications is to prefix all routes with a locale. This can be done by defining a different prefix for each locale (and setting an empty prefix for your default locale if you prefer it):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# config/routes/attributes.yaml
controllers:
resource: '../../src/Controller/'
type: attribute
prefix:
en: '' # don't prefix URLs for English, the default locale
nl: '/nl'
Note
If a route being imported includes the special _locale parameter in its own definition, Symfony will only import it for that locale and not for the other configured locale prefixes.
E.g. if a route contains locale: 'en'
in its definition and it's being
imported with en
(prefix: empty) and nl
(prefix: /nl
) locales,
that route will be available only in en
locale and not in nl
.
Another common requirement is to host the website on a different domain according to the locale. This can be done by defining a different host for each locale.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
# config/routes/attributes.yaml
controllers:
resource: '../../src/Controller/'
type: attribute
host:
en: 'www.example.com'
nl: 'www.example.nl'
Stateless Routes
Sometimes, when an HTTP response should be cached, it is important to ensure that can happen. However, whenever a session is started during a request, Symfony turns the response into a private non-cacheable response.
For details, see HTTP Cache.
Routes can configure a stateless
boolean option in order to declare that the
session shouldn't be used when matching a request:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
// src/Controller/MainController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class MainController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/', name: 'homepage', stateless: true)]
public function homepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Now, if the session is used, the application will report it based on your
kernel.debug
parameter:
enabled
: will throw an UnexpectedSessionUsageException exceptiondisabled
: will log a warning
It will help you understand and hopefully fixing unexpected behavior in your application.
Generating URLs
Routing systems are bidirectional:
- they associate URLs with controllers (as explained in the previous sections);
- they generate URLs for a given route.
Generating URLs from routes allows you to not write the <a href="...">
values manually in your HTML templates. Also, if the URL of some route changes,
you only have to update the route configuration and all links will be updated.
To generate a URL, you need to specify the name of the route (e.g.
blog_show
) and the values of the parameters defined by the route (e.g.
slug = my-blog-post
).
For that reason each route has an internal name that must be unique in the
application. If you don't set the route name explicitly with the name
option, Symfony generates an automatic name based on the controller and action.
Symfony declares route aliases based on the FQCN if the target class has an
__invoke()
method that adds a route and if the target class added
one route exactly. Symfony also automatically adds an alias for every method
that defines only one route. Consider the following class:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
// src/Controller/MainController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
final class MainController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/', name: 'homepage')]
public function homepage(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
Symfony will add a route alias named App\Controller\MainController::homepage
.
Generating URLs in Controllers
If your controller extends from the AbstractController,
use the generateUrl()
helper:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
// src/Controller/BlogController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGeneratorInterface;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/blog', name: 'blog_list')]
public function list(): Response
{
// generate a URL with no route arguments
$signUpPage = $this->generateUrl('sign_up');
// generate a URL with route arguments
$userProfilePage = $this->generateUrl('user_profile', [
'username' => $user->getUserIdentifier(),
]);
// generated URLs are "absolute paths" by default. Pass a third optional
// argument to generate different URLs (e.g. an "absolute URL")
$signUpPage = $this->generateUrl('sign_up', [], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);
// when a route is localized, Symfony uses by default the current request locale
// pass a different '_locale' value if you want to set the locale explicitly
$signUpPageInDutch = $this->generateUrl('sign_up', ['_locale' => 'nl']);
// ...
}
}
Note
If you pass to the generateUrl()
method some parameters that are not
part of the route definition, they are included in the generated URL as a
query string:
1 2 3
$this->generateUrl('blog', ['page' => 2, 'category' => 'Symfony']);
// the 'blog' route only defines the 'page' parameter; the generated URL is:
// /blog/2?category=Symfony
Caution
While objects are converted to string when used as placeholders, they are not converted when used as extra parameters. So, if you're passing an object (e.g. an Uuid) as value of an extra parameter, you need to explicitly convert it to a string:
1
$this->generateUrl('blog', ['uuid' => (string) $entity->getUuid()]);
If your controller does not extend from AbstractController
, you'll need to
fetch services in your controller and
follow the instructions of the next section.
Generating URLs in Services
Inject the router
Symfony service into your own services and use its
generate()
method. When using service autowiring
you only need to add an argument in the service constructor and type-hint it with
the UrlGeneratorInterface class:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
// src/Service/SomeService.php
namespace App\Service;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGeneratorInterface;
class SomeService
{
public function __construct(
private UrlGeneratorInterface $router,
) {
}
public function someMethod(): void
{
// ...
// generate a URL with no route arguments
$signUpPage = $this->router->generate('sign_up');
// generate a URL with route arguments
$userProfilePage = $this->router->generate('user_profile', [
'username' => $user->getUserIdentifier(),
]);
// generated URLs are "absolute paths" by default. Pass a third optional
// argument to generate different URLs (e.g. an "absolute URL")
$signUpPage = $this->router->generate('sign_up', [], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);
// when a route is localized, Symfony uses by default the current request locale
// pass a different '_locale' value if you want to set the locale explicitly
$signUpPageInDutch = $this->router->generate('sign_up', ['_locale' => 'nl']);
}
}
Generating URLs in Templates
Read the section about creating links between pages in the main article about Symfony templates.
Generating URLs in JavaScript
If your JavaScript code is included in a Twig template, you can use the
path()
and url()
Twig functions to generate the URLs and store them in
JavaScript variables. The escape()
filter is needed to escape any
non-JavaScript-safe values:
1 2 3
<script>
const route = "{{ path('blog_show', {slug: 'my-blog-post'})|escape('js') }}";
</script>
If you need to generate URLs dynamically or if you are using pure JavaScript code, this solution doesn't work. In those cases, consider using the FOSJsRoutingBundle.
Generating URLs in Commands
Generating URLs in commands works the same as
generating URLs in services. The
only difference is that commands are not executed in the HTTP context. Therefore,
if you generate absolute URLs, you'll get http://localhost/
as the host name
instead of your real host name.
The solution is to configure the default_uri
option to define the
"request context" used by commands when they generate URLs:
1 2 3 4 5
# config/packages/routing.yaml
framework:
router:
# ...
default_uri: 'https://example.org/my/path/'
Now you'll get the expected results when generating URLs in your commands:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
// src/Command/SomeCommand.php
namespace App\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGeneratorInterface;
// ...
class SomeCommand extends Command
{
public function __construct(private UrlGeneratorInterface $urlGenerator)
{
parent::__construct();
}
protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output): int
{
// generate a URL with no route arguments
$signUpPage = $this->urlGenerator->generate('sign_up');
// generate a URL with route arguments
$userProfilePage = $this->urlGenerator->generate('user_profile', [
'username' => $user->getUserIdentifier(),
]);
// by default, generated URLs are "absolute paths". Pass a third optional
// argument to generate different URIs (e.g. an "absolute URL")
$signUpPage = $this->urlGenerator->generate('sign_up', [], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);
// when a route is localized, Symfony uses by default the current request locale
// pass a different '_locale' value if you want to set the locale explicitly
$signUpPageInDutch = $this->urlGenerator->generate('sign_up', ['_locale' => 'nl']);
// ...
}
}
Note
By default, the URLs generated for web assets use the same default_uri
value, but you can change it with the asset.request_context.base_path
and asset.request_context.secure
container parameters.
Checking if a Route Exists
In highly dynamic applications, it may be necessary to check whether a route exists before using it to generate a URL. In those cases, don't use the getRouteCollection() method because that regenerates the routing cache and slows down the application.
Instead, try to generate the URL and catch the RouteNotFoundException thrown when the route doesn't exist:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Exception\RouteNotFoundException;
// ...
try {
$url = $this->router->generate($routeName, $routeParameters);
} catch (RouteNotFoundException $e) {
// the route is not defined...
}
Forcing HTTPS on Generated URLs
Note
If your server runs behind a proxy that terminates SSL, make sure to configure Symfony to work behind a proxy
The configuration for the scheme is only used for non-HTTP requests.
The schemes
option together with incorrect proxy configuration will
lead to a redirect loop.
By default, generated URLs use the same HTTP scheme as the current request.
In console commands, where there is no HTTP request, URLs use http
by
default. You can change this per command (via the router's getContext()
method) or globally with these configuration parameters:
1 2 3 4
# config/services.yaml
parameters:
router.request_context.scheme: 'https'
asset.request_context.secure: true
Outside of console commands, use the schemes
option to define the scheme of
each route explicitly:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
// src/Controller/SecurityController.php
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class SecurityController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/login', name: 'login', schemes: ['https'])]
public function login(): Response
{
// ...
}
}
The URL generated for the login
route will always use HTTPS. This means that
when using the path()
Twig function to generate URLs, you may get an
absolute URL instead of a relative URL if the HTTP scheme of the original
request is different from the scheme used by the route:
1 2 3 4 5 6
{# if the current scheme is HTTPS, generates a relative URL: /login #}
{{ path('login') }}
{# if the current scheme is HTTP, generates an absolute URL to change
the scheme: https://example.com/login #}
{{ path('login') }}
The scheme requirement is also enforced for incoming requests. If you try to
access the /login
URL with HTTP, you will automatically be redirected to the
same URL, but with the HTTPS scheme.
If you want to force a group of routes to use HTTPS, you can define the default scheme when importing them. The following example forces HTTPS on all routes defined as attributes:
1 2 3 4 5
# config/routes/attributes.yaml
controllers:
resource: '../../src/Controller/'
type: attribute
schemes: [https]
Note
The Security component provides
another way to enforce HTTP or HTTPS
via the requires_channel
setting.
Signing URIs
A signed URI is an URI that includes a hash value that depends on the contents of the URI. This way, you can later check the integrity of the signed URI by recomputing its hash value and comparing it with the hash included in the URI.
Symfony provides a utility to sign URIs via the UriSigner service, which you can inject in your services or controllers:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
// src/Service/SomeService.php
namespace App\Service;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\UriSigner;
class SomeService
{
public function __construct(
private UriSigner $uriSigner,
) {
}
public function someMethod(): void
{
// ...
// generate a URL yourself or get it somehow...
$url = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc';
// sign the URL (it adds a query parameter called '_hash')
$signedUrl = $this->uriSigner->sign($url);
// $url = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc&_hash=e4a21b9'
// check the URL signature
$uriSignatureIsValid = $this->uriSigner->check($signedUrl);
// $uriSignatureIsValid = true
// if you have access to the current Request object, you can use this
// other method to pass the entire Request object instead of the URI:
$uriSignatureIsValid = $this->uriSigner->checkRequest($request);
}
}
For security reasons, it's common to make signed URIs expire after some time
(e.g. when using them to reset user credentials). By default, signed URIs don't
expire, but you can define an expiration date/time using the $expiration
argument of sign():
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
// src/Service/SomeService.php
namespace App\Service;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\UriSigner;
class SomeService
{
public function __construct(
private UriSigner $uriSigner,
) {
}
public function someMethod(): void
{
// ...
// generate a URL yourself or get it somehow...
$url = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc';
// sign the URL with an explicit expiration date
$signedUrl = $this->uriSigner->sign($url, new \DateTimeImmutable('2050-01-01'));
// $signedUrl = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc&_expiration=2524608000&_hash=e4a21b9'
// if you pass a \DateInterval, it will be added from now to get the expiration date
$signedUrl = $this->uriSigner->sign($url, new \DateInterval('PT10S')); // valid for 10 seconds from now
// $signedUrl = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc&_expiration=1712414278&_hash=e4a21b9'
// you can also use a timestamp in seconds
$signedUrl = $this->uriSigner->sign($url, 4070908800); // timestamp for the date 2099-01-01
// $signedUrl = 'https://example.com/foo/bar?sort=desc&_expiration=4070908800&_hash=e4a21b9'
}
}
Note
The expiration date/time is included in the signed URIs as a timestamp via
the _expiration
query parameter.
7.1
The feature to add an expiration date for a signed URI was introduced in Symfony 7.1.
Troubleshooting
Here are some common errors you might see while working with routing:
1 2
Controller "App\\Controller\\BlogController::show()" requires that you
provide a value for the "$slug" argument.
This happens when your controller method has an argument (e.g. $slug
):
1 2 3 4
public function show(string $slug): Response
{
// ...
}
But your route path does not have a {slug}
parameter (e.g. it is
/blog/show
). Add a {slug}
to your route path: /blog/show/{slug}
or
give the argument a default value (i.e. $slug = null
).
1 2
Some mandatory parameters are missing ("slug") to generate a URL for route
"blog_show".
This means that you're trying to generate a URL to the blog_show
route but
you are not passing a slug
value (which is required, because it has a
{slug}
parameter in the route path). To fix this, pass a slug
value when
generating the route:
1
$this->generateUrl('blog_show', ['slug' => 'slug-value']);
or, in Twig:
1
{{ path('blog_show', {slug: 'slug-value'}) }}