Import an HTML file from inside a Twig template - php

Question

I want to import an HTML file from inside a Twig template. The HTML file is located at /var/files/5 (with no extension). And I render the template like this:
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../var/files/5';
$content = $this->get('templating')->render('ProConvocationBundle:Default:definitive-view.html.twig', array('path' => $path));
Inside the Twig template I import the HTML file like this:
{% include path %}
but it is not finding the path: Unable to find template "/myDocumentRoot/../app/var/files/5"
I've also tried several relative paths without success. Any idea of how to achieve it?

Answer 1

What causes this exception?
After digging in the Twig code a little, the following seems to cause this exception:
Twig tries to load the file from a known path/namespace, being bundle names (like /var/www/myApplication/src/AcmeBundle/Resources/views) and the app path being myApplication/app/Resources/views). Anyway it doesn't accept absolute paths, since it always tries to add a known path to the beginning of the given file.
<?php
// Twig/Loader/Filesystem.php
class Twig_Loader_Filesystem {
// ...
protected function findTemplate()
{
// ...
foreach ($this->paths[$namespace] as $path) {
if (is_file($path.'/'.$shortname)) {
return $this->cache[$name] = $path.'/'.$shortname;
}
}
throw new Twig_Error_Loader(sprintf('Unable to find template "%s" (looked into: %s).', $name, implode(', ', $this->paths[$namespace])));
}
So it basically isn't possible to include a file by an absolue path, like in your example.
How to solve this?
You've got a bunch of possibilities to achieve this behaviour:
Add the path to the template loader
See post by #Adam Elsodaney
Move the file
You could simply move your file from app/var/files to app/Resources/views/var/files and use the path var/files/5 to include the file. This is probably not a suitable solution, since you want to keep those files in place.
Write a Twig Extension
You could write your own extension that provides a function named something like include_absolute() that simply returns file_get_contents($yourPath).
More on Twig extensions: http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/templating/twig_extension.html
Be aware that you would might need to add the |raw filter to the output of the Twig function since a lot of stuff gets escaped everywhere.

Answer 2

In Symfony, you should make everything relative to the Kernel root directory which is the app directory.
$uploadedTemplatesDir = $this->get('kernel')->getRootDir() . '/../var/files';
Then add this to your templating loader
$this->get('twig.loader')->addPath($uploadedTemplatesDir);