Symfony2 forms, search and SEO friendly Urls - php

Question

Ok, this is the problem:
I have a search form where I have several input fields to specify a search request. I use Symfony2 forms to benefit from validation, CSRF-protection and all the good jazz.
Now, I want the URLs of the search results to be both SEO friendly and bookmarkable.
e.g.
http://www.example.com/blue-car-in-Berlin-200km/
My current approach after doing some research is building the desired search slug and redirecting to another action like so:
//some form code
if($searchForm->isValid()){
$searchWidget = $searchForm->getData();
if(!empty($searchWidget->getSearch()))
$slug = $searchWidget->getSearch();
if(!empty($searchWidget->getPlace()))
$slug .= '-in-' . $searchWidget->getPlace()->getName());
if(!empty($searchWidget->getDistance()))
$slug .= '-' . $searchWidget->getDistance().'km';
return $this->redirectToRoute('app_search', array('search'=>$slug));
}
With the second controller which is basically supposed to look like this:
public function searchAction(Request $request, $search)
{
//extract actual terms out of the $search - slug
....
//find a way to inject the terms in the current request-Object (dirty)
...
//do all validation again
}
As already stated in the code this feels really inefficient and cumbersome. Isn't there a better way to do all this? Like having a URL representation which is independent of the actual logic?
Furthermore, is there even a clean solution to use all the benefits of symfony form without actual request parameters but with that request slug?.
Thanks

Answer 1

You could define the route for the search action like that (I'm using annotations here):
/**
* #Route("/search/{search}-in-{place}-{distance}km", name="app_search")
* #Method({"GET"})
*/
public function searchAction(Request $request, $search, $place, $distance)
{
// Your code here
}
Of course this is valid if those three search parameters are the only one needed and only if they are all three mandatory; if the search parameters are not mandatory, you have to define more routes to match all the possible combinations (and I think this is not the right way).
A simpler solution is maybe to create a dynamic slug (it can have one or more values) with some sort of fixed formatting from which you can easily extract all the desired search values. But at this point I would like to ask: why don't you use some simple GET parameters (something like /search?search=blue+car&place=berlin&distance=200)?
Update
Expanding the idea of a flexible search string, you could try something like that:
/**
* #Route("/search/{searchString}", name="app_search")
* #Method({"GET"})
*/
public function searchAction(Request $request, $searchString)
{
// Your code here
}
searchString can be something like that ("<...>" is a placeholder for the real data like "city-berlin"):
city-<...>/distance-<...>/place-<...>
You just have to explode by '/' and then, for each piece, explode by '-' and use the first piece as ID for what to search. The first explode should return something like that:
[
'city-<...>',
'distance-<...>',
'place-<...>'
]
The second explode on each of those elements should return
[ 'city', '<...>' ]
This method is the most flexible because the order of the search parameters doesn't matter and no parameters is mandatory for the analysis.

Answer 2

I think you need SEO bundle for this.