Symfony2 Routing: How to set a default value

Question

In my Controller I have 2 Actions with annotations:

/**
     * Lists all Mains entities.
     *
     * @Route("/{lang}/{main_name}", defaults={"lang" = "de"})
     * @Method("GET")
     * @Template()
     */
    public function mainAction($lang,$main_name)
    {
        $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
        $entity = $em->getRepository('MyWebsiteBundle:Main')->findOneBy(array('name'=>$main_name));
        echo $entity->getContent();

        die;

    }

    /**
     * Lists all Branches.
     *
     * @Route("/{lang}/{branch}/b{id}", defaults={"lang" = "de"})
     * @Method("GET")
     * @Template()
     */
    public function branchAction($lang,$id)
    {
        $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
        $entity = $em->getRepository('MyWebsiteBundle:Branch')->find($id);
        echo $entity->getMain()." > ".$entity->getName()."<br><br>";
        echo $entity->getContent();

        die;

    }

When I call the mainAction Link without "lang" for example: "localhost/contact" instead of "localhost/en/contact" It works, th site "contact" is been called.

But when I call the branchAction like "localhost/products/b2" instead of "localhost/en/products/b2" I get an error because I think its been called the mainAction.

Is it possible what I want to do? THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!

Answer 1

It sounds like a simplified version of your requirements are:

• If the URL does not start with /[az]{2}/ , then rewrite the URL, prepending /de/ to the original path.
• If the URL starts with /[az]{2}/ , then handle it normally.

If that's the case, then making this your first controller action would likely work:

/**
 * @Route("/{path}", name = "rewrite", requirements = { "path" = "[a-zA-Z]{3,}" })
 */
public function rewriteAction($path) {

    $defaultLanguage = "de";

    return $this->redirect("$defaultLanguage/$path");

}

This uses the requirements field to instruct Symfony to only use this route if the path begins with 3 letters (ie more than 2 letters).

There's a few nuances you'll need to handle (removing extra slashes, handling one-character paths like /a/ , handling paths with digits like /t5 , etc.), but I think this might be a good start.

You could also handle this on the server level, for example by using Apache URL redirects.

Finally, please don't echo $content; and die; in your controller methods. That defeats the purpose of having an MVC framework. Rather, you should use return new Response($content); . This way, if Symfony has any post-processing to do after the controller method is called, it can do it.