Question

I created a filter form to limit the entities shown in a list.
It works by POST, and I need it to remember the state, so when you leva the page and return later the filters ara the same than when you left.

I stored the filters in the session and load them when no POST is used. The filters work great.
But the form does not display the values. I am triing to update the request values before binding the form but this isn’t working, I don’t know why…

$filterForm = $this->createForm(new TourFilter($this->container, $destinations));
$session = $this->getRequest()->getSession();

if ($request->getMethod() == 'POST') {
  //This is when I get the request (POST) values to do the filtering

  $filterForm->bindRequest($request);
  $params = $request->request->get('buv_marketplacebundle_tourfilter');

  //in parseFilerParams I do some validation and transforming parameters
  $filters = $this->parseFilterParams($params, $base_filters);

  //store current params in the session
  $session->set('tour_filters', $params);

} else {
  //get parameters from the session
  $params = $session->get('tour_filters');

  if (is_array($params) && count($params) > 0) {
    //update the request with the parameters from the session
    $request->request->replace(array('buv_marketplacebundle_tourfilter' => $params));

    //bind the updated request to the form
    $filterForm->bindRequest($request);

    $filters = $this->parseFilterParams($params, $base_filters);
  } else {
    $filters = $base_filters;
  }
}

//search for the entities
$entities = $em->getRepository('BuvMarketplaceBundle:Tour')->getFilteredTours($filters);

Answer 1

The form->bindRequest() method is for populating a form’s underlying data class with data from the request. When you call it from the else clause you are binding the form to a request which contains no data, effectively clearing the form. To manually fill the form you need to call form->setData(). Then assuming you are passing your $filterForm in your call to render() (I can’t see the whole of your action method) your filter params should be populated.

For example, assuming TourFilter is the data class for your filter form, instead of:

//bind the updated request to the form
$filterForm->bindRequest($request);

You need something like:

// This line can go at the top, use $filterData in the second line
$filterData = new TourFilter($this->container, $destinations);
...
$filterData->setParams($params);
$filterForm->setData($filterData);

This may not be exactly right as I don’t know the name of the TourFilter attribute that maps to your form’s params field.

If you are not going to use $form->getData() to get values from your form (in this case ‘params’) you don’t need to call form->bindRequest() at all. This is generally useful where the form’s underlying data class is an entity and saves manually coping values over from the form before persisting the entity to the DB. For example:

$filterForm->bindRequest($request);
$filterData = $filterForm->getData();
$params = $filterData->getParams();