Symfony2 routes

Let’s look at two identhical routes, one described in symfony 1.4:

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post:
    pattern:  /posts/:id
    params:       { module: Blog, action: posts }
    requirements:
      sf_method: [GET, PUT, DELETE]

and the other one in Symfony2:

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post:
    pattern:  /posts/:id
    defaults: { _controller: BlogBundle:Post:posts }
    requirements:
      _method: (GET|PUT|DELETE)

as you see there are a few changes, so let’s compare them line after line!

You ain’t gonna need the @ anymore

The symfony 1.X routing system was mainly identifying the routes through the @ prefix.

That was also the way to write faster routes:

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url_for('post', array('id' => 1)) // slow
url_for('@post?id=1') // fast

With the new routing system you’ll be only able to reference the plain route name:

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<?php

// in a controller
$this->generateUrl('post', array('id' => 1);

Effectively working patterns

Once you describe your routing pattern, for example:

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/post/:id

Symfony will be able to incapsulate and isolate the request object, the controller and the needed parameters.

No more sfWebRequest’s hyper-referencing to get any routing parameter:

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<?php

public function executePost(sfWebRequest $request)
{
  $id = $request->getGetParameter('id');

they are directly injected to your action:

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<?php

public function postAction($id)

From YAML to PHP

The localization of the proper action able to handle the matched route is not a params array anymore.

Since Symfony2 introduced multiple controllers per bundle, you need to specify, in one parameter, the bundle, the controller and the action:

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defaults: { _controller: MyBundle:DefaultController:ActionName }

Internals

As you’ve seen, there is no sHell..ops, sf prefix for any internal convention.

For example, when requiring a request method, you need to specify the _method parameter, not the sf_method anymore.

Multiple request methods

When dealing with some URLs ( ie. /posts ) you want to let the resource being asked with different verbs, such as GET to get the entire posts collection, POST for inserting a new one… etc etc…

In symfony 1.X the methods were described as a YAML array:

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sf_method: [X, Y, Z]

while in Symfony2 you have a slightly different syntax:

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_method: (X|Y|Z)

which banally reminds us the native language statements/operators:

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if (x || y || z)