Question

I’ve been following the Documentation on creating custom form types given in the docs:
http://symfony.com/doc/master/cookbook/form/create_custom_field_type.html#using-the-field-type

Having the GenderType from the given example, i’d like to “pimp” my entity, which i’m working on with the new FormType.

class Person {

    const GENDER_MALE = "m";
    const GENDER_FEMALE = "f";

    private $gender;

    ....
    /* generated getter/setter  */

    .....

    public function getGenderAsText() 
    {
          return $this->getGender() == self::GENDER_MALE?"male":"female";
    }


} 

My question, maybe has anyone a a good advise.. .how to combine the elegance of the GenderType which handels choice picking the form like a charm with my model, so ease usage in templates etc.. ?

Update

Alex pointed out, how to display a specific field with a self-written gender twig extension.

This works like a charm, when you especially call the extension on the field
{{ item.gender|gender }}

I’m having a bunch of objects, using inheritance for the common fields – but there’s a bunch of data which are unique for each class.
I’ve written some logic to extract all properties, hand ’em over to the template and a TwigExtension handles rendering:

public function dynamicContractFilter($value)
{
    // handle DateTime
    if ($value instanceof \DateTime) {
        return $value->format('d.m.Y');
    }
    ....
    } elseif (is_bool($value)) {
        return $value ? 'yes' : 'no';
    } else {
        return $value;  // plain string
    }

}

I can’t determine if it’s a simple string/integer or a “GenderTypedField”..

I guess this is some kind of limitation of PHP itself, as it’s typeless.. sight

Answer 1

The best approach would be to write a gender twig extension.

That way you could display m as Male and f as Female anywhere, not only in the Person entity. It also provides clear separation between your data and your display code.

Like so:

namespace Acme\DemoBundle\Twig;

class GenderExtension extends \Twig_Extension
{
    const
        MALE   = 'Male',
        FEMALE = 'Female';

    public function getFilters()
    {
        return array(
            'gender' => new \Twig_Filter_Method($this, 'gender'),
        );
    }

    public function gender($token)
    {
        if ('m' === $token)
            return self::MALE;

        if ('f' === $token)
            return self::FEMALE;

        throw new \InvalidArgumentException('Invalid argument, expecting either "m" or "f".');
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return 'acme_gender_extension';
    }
}

You would then have in your template:

{{ person.gender | gender }}