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The admin generator of symfony allows the creation of a backend interface for your model classes. It works whether you use Propel or Doctrine as your ORM.

Creation

Admin generator modules are created by the propel:generate-admin or doctrine:generate-admin tasks:

$ php symfony propel:generate-admin backend Article

$ php symfony doctrine:generate-admin backend Article

The above command creates an article admin generator module for the Article model class.

The generator.yml configuration file is cached as a PHP file; the process is automatically managed by the sfGeneratorConfigHandler class.

Configuration File

The configuration of such a module can be done in the apps/backend/modules/model/article/generator.yml file:

generator:
  class: sfPropelGenerator
  param:
    # An array of parameters

The file contains two main entries: class and param. The class is sfPropelGenerator for Propel and sfDoctrineGenerator for Doctrine.

The param entry contains the configuration options for the generated module. The model_class defines the model class bound to this module, and the theme option defines the default theme to use.

But the main configuration is done under the config entry. It is organized into seven sections:

• actions: Default configuration for the actions found on the list and on the forms
• fields: Default configuration for the fields
• list: Configuration for the list
• filter: Configuration for the filters
• form: Configuration for the new/edit form
• edit: Specific configuration for the edit page
• new: Specific configuration for the new page

When first generated, all sections are defined as empty, as the admin generator defines sensible defaults for all possible options:

generator:
  param:
    config:
      actions: ~
      fields:  ~
      list:    ~
      filter:  ~
      form:    ~
      edit:    ~
      new:     ~

This document describes all possible options you can use to customize the admin generator through the config entry.

All options are available for both Propel and Doctrine and works the same if not stated otherwise.

Fields

A lot of options take a list of fields as an argument. A field can be a real column name, or a virtual one. In both cases, a getter must be defined in the model class (get suffixed by the camel-cased field name).

Based on the context, the admin generator is smart enough to know how to render fields. To customize the rendering, you can create a partial or a component. By convention, partials are prefixed with an underscore (_), and components by a tilde (~):

display: [_title, ~content]

In the above example, the title field will be rendered by the title partial, and the content field by the content component.

The admin generator passes some parameters to partials and components:

• For the new and edit page:

  • form: The form associated with the current model object
  • attributes: An array of HTML attributes to be applied to the widget

• For the list page:

  • type: list
  • MODEL_NAME: The current object instance, where MODEL_NAME is the singular name set in the generator options. If no explicit value is defined, singular name will default to the underscored version of the model class name (i.e. CamelCase becomes camel_case)

In an edit or new page, if you want to keep the two column layout (field label and widget), the partial or component template should follow this template:

<div class="sf_admin_form_row">
  <label>
    <!-- Field label or content to be displayed in the first column -->
  </label>
  <!-- Field widget or content to be displayed in the second column -->
</div>

Object Placeholders

Some options can take model object placeholders. A placeholder is a string which follows the pattern: %%NAME%%. The NAME string can be anything that can be converted to a valid object getter method (get suffixed by the camel-cased version of the NAME string). For instance, %%title%% will be replaced by the value of $article->getTitle(). Placeholder values are dynamically replaced at runtime according to the object associated with the current context.

When a model has a foreign key to another model, Propel and Doctrine define a getter for the related object. As for any other getter, it can be used as a placeholder if you define a meaningful __toString() method that converts the object to a string.

Configuration Inheritance

The admin generator configuration is based on a configuration cascade principle. The inheritance rules are the following:

• new and edit inherit from form which inherits from fields
• list inherits from fields
• filter inherits from fields

Credentials

Actions in the admin generator (on the list and on the forms) can be hidden, based on the user credentials using the credential option (see below). However, even if the link or button does not appear, the actions must still be properly secured from illicit access. The credential management in the admin generator only takes care of the display.

The credential option can also be used to hide columns on the list page.

Actions Customization

When configuration is not sufficient, you can override the generated methods:

Templates Customization

Each generated template can be overridden:

Look and Feel Customization

The look of the admin generator can be tweaked very easily as the generated templates define a lot of class and id HTML attributes.

In the edit or new page, each field HTML container has the following classes:

• sf_admin_form_row
• a class depending on the field type: sf_admin_text, sf_admin_boolean, sf_admin_date, sf_admin_time, or sf_admin_foreignkey.
• sf_admin_form_field_COLUMN where COLUMN is the column name

In the list page, each field HTML container has the following classes:

• a class depending on the field type: sf_admin_text, sf_admin_boolean, sf_admin_date, sf_admin_time, or sf_admin_foreignkey.
• sf_admin_form_field_COLUMN where COLUMN is the column name

Available Configuration Options

• actions

  • label
  • action
  • credentials

• fields

  • label
  • help
  • attributes
  • credentials
  • renderer
  • renderer_arguments
  • type
  • date_format

• list

  • title
  • display
  • hide
  • layout
  • params
  • sort
  • max_per_page
  • pager_class
  • batch_actions
  • object_actions
  • actions
  • peer_method
  • peer_count_method
  • table_method
  • table_count_method

• filter

  • display
  • class

• form

  • display
  • class

• edit

  • title
  • actions

• new

  • title
  • actions

fields

The fields section defines the default configuration for each field. This configuration is defined for all pages and can be overridden on a page per page basis (list, filter, form, edit, and new).

label

Default: The humanized column name

The label option defines the label to use for the field:

config:
  fields:
    slug: { label: "URL shortcut" }

help

Default: none

The help option defines the help text to display for the field.

attributes

Default: array()

The attributes option defines the HTML attributes to pass to the widget:

config:
  fields:
    slug: { attributes: { class: foo } }

credentials

Default: none

The credentials option defines credentials the user must have for the field to be displayed. The credentials are only enforced for the object list.

config:
  fields:
    slug:      { credentials: [admin] }
    is_online: { credentials: [[admin, moderator]] }

The credential are to be defined with the same rules as in the security.yml configuration file.

renderer

Default: none

The renderer option defines a PHP callback to call to render the field. If defined, it overrides any other flag like the partial or component ones.

The callback is called with the value of the field and the arguments defined by the renderer_arguments option.

renderer_arguments

Default: array()

The renderer_arguments option defines the arguments to pass to the renderer PHP callback when rendering the field. It is only used if the renderer option is defined.

type

Default: Text for virtual columns

The type option defines the type of the column. By default, symfony uses the type defined in your model definition, but if you create a virtual column, you can override the default Text type by one of the valid types:

• ForeignKey
• Boolean
• Date
• Time
• Text
• Enum (only available for Doctrine)

date_format

Default: f

The date_format option defines the format to use when displaying dates. It can be any format recognized by the sfDateFormat class. This option is not used when the field type is Date.

The following tokens can be used for the format:

• G: Era
• y: year
• M: mon
• d: mday
• h: Hour12
• H: hours
• m: minutes
• s: seconds
• E: wday
• D: yday
• F: DayInMonth
• w: WeekInYear
• W: WeekInMonth
• a: AMPM
• k: HourInDay
• K: HourInAMPM
• z: TimeZone

actions

The framework defines several built-in actions. They are all prefixed by an underscore (_). Each action can be customized with the options described in this section. The same options can be used when defining an action in the list, edit, or new entries.

label

Default: The action key

The label option defines the label to use for the action.

action

Default: Defined based on the action name

The action option defines the action name to execute without the execute prefix.

credentials

Default: none

The credentials option defines credentials the user must have for the action to be displayed.

The credentials are to be defined with the same rules as in the security.yml configuration file.

list

title

Default: The humanized model class name suffixed with "List"

The title option defines the title of the list page.

display

Default: All model columns, in the order of their definition in the schema file

The display option defines an array of ordered columns to display in the list.

An equal sign (=) before a column is a convention to convert the string to a link that goes to the edit page of the current object.

config:
  list:
    display: [=name, slug]

Also see the hide option to hide some columns.

hide

Default: none

The hide option defines the columns to hide from the list. Instead of specifying the columns to be displayed with the display option, it is sometimes faster to hide some columns:

config:
  list:
    hide: [created_at, updated_at]

If both the display and the hide options are provided, the hide option is ignored.

layout

Default: tabular

Possible values: tabular or stacked

The layout option defines what layout to use to display the list.

With the tabular layout, each column value is in its own table column.

With the stacked layout, each object is represented by a single string, which is defined by the params option (see below).

The display option is still needed when using the stacked layout as it defines the columns that will be sortable by the user.

params

Default value: none

The params option is used to define the HTML string pattern to use when using a stacked layout. This string can contain model object placeholders:

config:
  list:
    params:  |
      %%title%% written by %%author%% and published on %%published_at%%.

An equal sign (=) before a column is a convention to convert the string to a link that goes to the edit page of the current object.

sort

Default value: none

The sort option defines the default sort column. It is an array composed of two components: the column name and the sort order: asc or desc:

config:
  list:
    sort: [published_at, desc]

max_per_page

Default value: 20

The max_per_page option defines the maximum number of objects to display on one page.

pager_class

Default value: sfPropelPager for Propel and sfDoctrinePager for Doctrine

The pager_class option defines the pager class to use when displaying the list.

batch_actions

Default value: { _delete: ~ }

The batch_actions option defines the list of actions that can be executed for a selection of objects in the list.

If you don't define an action, the admin generator will look for a method named after the camel-cased name prefixed by executeBatch.

The executed method received the primary keys of the selected objects via the ids request parameter.

The batch actions feature can be disabled by setting the option to an empty array: {}

object_actions

Default value: { _edit: ~, _delete: ~ }

The object_actions option defines the list of actions that can be executed on each object of the list:

object_actions:
  moveUp:     { label: "move up", action: "moveUp" }
  moveDown:   { label: "move down", action: "moveDown" }
  _edit:      ~
  _delete:    ~

If you don't define an action, the admin generator will look for a method named after the camel-cased name prefixed by executeList.

The object actions feature can be disabled by setting the option to an empty array: {}

actions

Default value: { _new: ~ }

The actions option defines actions that take no object, like the creation of a new object.

If you don't define an action, the admin generator will look for a method named after the camel-cased name prefixed by executeList.

The object actions feature can be disabled by setting the option to an empty array: {}

peer_method

Default value: doSelect

The peer_method option defines the method to call to retrieve the objects to display in the list.

This option only exists for Propel. For Doctrine, use the table_method option.

table_method

Default value: doSelect

The table_method option defines the method to call to retrieve the objects to display in the list.

This option only exists for Doctrine. For Propel, use the peer_method option.

peer_count_method

Default value: doCount

The peer_count_method option defines the method to call to compute the number of objects for the current filter.

This option only exists for Propel. For Doctrine, use the table_count_method option.

table_count_method

Default value: doCount

The table_count_method option defines the method to call to compute the number of objects for the current filter.

This option only exists for Doctrine. For Propel, use the peer_count_method option.

filter

The filter section defines the configuration for the filtering form displayed on the list page.

display

Default value: All fields defined in the filter form class, in the order of their definition

The display option defines the ordered list of fields to display.

As filter fields are always optional, there is no need to override the filter form class to configure the fields to be displayed.

class

Default value: The model class name suffixed by FormFilter

The class option defines the form class to use for the filter form.

To completely remove the filtering feature, set the class to false.

form

The form section only exists as a fallback for the edit and new sections (see the inheritance rules in the introduction).

For form sections (form, edit, and new), the label and help options override the ones defined in the form classes.

display

Default value: All fields defined in the form class, in the order of their definition

The display option defines the ordered list of fields to display.

This option can also be used to arrange fields into groups:

# apps/backend/modules/model/config/generator.yml
config:
  form:
    display:
      Content: [title, body, author]
      Admin:   [is_published, expires_at]

The above configuration defines two groups (Content and Admin), each containing a subset of the form fields.

All the fields defined in the model form must be present in the display option. If not, it could lead to unexpected validation errors.

class

Default value: The model class name suffixed by Form

The class option defines the form class to use for the edit and new pages.

Even though you can define a class option in both the new and edit sections, it is better to use one class and take care of the differences using conditional logic.

edit

The edit section takes the same options as the form section.

title

Default: "Edit " suffixed by the humanized model class name

The title option defines the title heading of the edit page. It can contain model object placeholders.

actions

Default value: { _delete: ~, _list: ~, _save: ~ }

The actions option defines actions available when submitting the form.

new

The new section takes the same options as the form section.

title

Default: "New " suffixed by the humanized model class name

The title option defines the title of the new page. It can contain model object placeholders.

Even if the object is new, it can have default values you want to output as part of the title.

actions

Default value: { _delete: ~, _list: ~, _save: ~, _save_and_add: ~ }

The actions option defines actions available when submitting the form.