Question

I want to have display-only fields to render data that’s never going to be changed nor submitted.

Similar to bootstrap’s static controls.

I need to show object data within a form without breaking the form structure or style. I want this data to use the same templates as all other inputs, but without rendering it as a dynamic input.

I thought of several ways to achieve this, some are plain hacks, some others seem more legitimate, but I wan’t to know if there is a more standard way to do this.

Here’s the list of options I have thought of in no particular order:

1. Use the read only property for fields: it does not feel very nice, I don’t want users to feel they can change something, but they are not allowed for some reason.

2. Hack the templates to output something other than input elements: seems very nasty to me, besides it would be necessary to handle server side the the missing fields on submits.

3. Extending field types to create display-only versions of them. I don’t think this would be safe.

4. Writing a custom fieldType to do the job. This option would be good to use as a base type for other fields.

I think the best solution is either option 3 or 4.
The only thing I still haven’t found is how to handle the missing fields on submit.

I think it’s important to have this type of fields because it allows reusing form types logic. Otherwise I end up writing twig templates that look like this:

<form>

    {# This is the average writtable field #}
    {{ form_row(form.field1) }} 

    {# This is the display-only field, notice I have to replicate
       markup. Even if I wrote a macro, which I did, I would still
       have to replicate markup in the macro.
    #}
    <label>Field 2</label>
    <div>{{ the_object.field2 }}</div>

</form>

And finally, does anyone have a better idea or think that this approach is flawed altogether?

Answer 1

I finally used the read_only property and custom templates (a combination of options 1 and 2) to change the rendering of fields with the read_only property on.

Fields with the readonly property on are not expected to be sent (they are rendered with the disabled attribute, the same @elnur pointed out) and are rejected if present on POST, so all I had to do is change the templates to render differently.

Here is an example template:

{% block field_widget %}
{% spaceless %}
    {% if read_only %}
        <span {{ block('widget_container_attributes') }} >
            {{ value|default('&nbsp')|raw }}
        </span>
    {% else %}
        {% set type = type|default('text') %}
        <input type="{{ type }}" {{ block('widget_attributes') }} value="{{ value }}" />
    {% endif %}
{% endspaceless %}
{% endblock field_widget %}

Another way to do it would be using form extensions to create a new property for all fields, but the read_only property suit my needs.