How to render a form without a class in other service? - php

Question

I want to generate a class-less form inside my service.
The way I do it is:
class StepSummary implements StepInterface
{
public function __construct($container)
{
$this->container = $container;
}
public function getVariables()
{
$form = $this->container->get('form.factory')->createBuilder('text')
->add('accept')
->getForm();
return array('form' => $form->createView());
}
}
In the API, I've found that I need to pass a form type to the FormBuilder - I didn't find any reference to that, so I've put imaginary text string. Now it renders the form but this way:
<input type="text" id="text" name="text" required="required" />
Obviously there is no reference to the accept field.

Answer 1

Controller's createForm() method was quite helpful here:
public function createFormBuilder($data = null, array $options = array())
{
return $this->container->get('form.factory')->createBuilder('form', $data, $options);
}
So the solution is:
$form = $this->container->get('form.factory')->createBuilder('form')
->add('accept')
->getForm();

Answer 2

Look at the chapter in the Symfony2 documentation called Using a Form without a Class.
Basically, you have to use createFormBuilder and instead of a string or an object you just pass an array with the default values.
From the documentation mentioned before:
// make sure you've imported the Request namespace above the class
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request
// ...
public function contactAction(Request $request)
{
$defaultData = array('message' => 'Type your message here');
$form = $this->createFormBuilder($defaultData)
->add('name', 'text')
->add('email', 'email')
->add('message', 'textarea')
->getForm();
if ($request->getMethod() == 'POST') {
$form->bind($request);
// data is an array with "name", "email", and "message" keys
$data = $form->getData();
}
// ... render the form
}

Answer 3

If you don´t want to tie your form to any particular object, you don´t need to pass any object to the builder, you can do:
$form = $this->container->get('form.factory')->createBuilder()
->add('accept')
->getForm();
If you want to set some defaults for the form, you can tie the form to an array. For example:
$data['accept'] = 'default accept';
$form = $this->container->get('form.factory')->createBuilder($data)
->add('accept')
->getForm();