Form Events

The Form component provides a structured process to let you customize your forms, by making use of the EventDispatcher component. Using form events, you may modify information or fields at different steps of the workflow: from the population of the form to the submission of the data from the request.

Registering an event listener is very easy using the Form component.

For example, if you wish to register a function to the FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT event, the following code lets you add a field, depending on the request values:

// ...

use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvent;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvents;

$listener = function (FormEvent $event) {
    // ...
};

$form = $formFactory->createBuilder()
    // add form fields
    ->addEventListener(FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT, $listener);

// ...

The Form Workflow

The Form Submission Workflow

../../_images/general_flow.png

1) Pre-populating the Form (FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA and FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA)

../../_images/set_data_flow.png

Two events are dispatched during pre-population of a form, when Form::setData() is called: FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA and FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA.

A) The FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA Event

The FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA event is dispatched at the beginning of the Form::setData() method. It can be used to:

  • Modify the data given during pre-population;
  • Modify a form depending on the pre-populated data (adding or removing fields dynamically).

Form Events Information Table

Data Type Value
Model data null
Normalized data null
View data null

警告

During FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA, Form::setData() is locked and will throw an exception if used. If you wish to modify data, you should use FormEvent::setData() instead.

B) The FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA Event

The FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA event is dispatched at the end of the Form::setData() method. This event is mostly here for reading data after having pre-populated the form.

Form Events Information Table

Data Type Value
Model data Model data injected into setData()
Normalized data Model data transformed using a model transformer
View data Normalized data transformed using a view transformer

2) Submitting a Form (FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT, FormEvents::SUBMIT and FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT)

../../_images/submission_flow.png

Three events are dispatched when Form::handleRequest() or Form::submit() are called: FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT, FormEvents::SUBMIT, FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT.

A) The FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT Event

The FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT event is dispatched at the beginning of the Form::submit() method.

It can be used to:

  • Change data from the request, before submitting the data to the form;
  • Add or remove form fields, before submitting the data to the form.

Form Events Information Table

Data Type Value
Model data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA
Normalized data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA
View data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA

B) The FormEvents::SUBMIT Event

The FormEvents::SUBMIT event is dispatched just before the Form::submit() method transforms back the normalized data to the model and view data.

It can be used to change data from the normalized representation of the data.

Form Events Information Table

Data Type Value
Model data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA
Normalized data Data from the request reverse-transformed from the request using a view transformer
View data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA

警告

At this point, you cannot add or remove fields to the form.

C) The FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT Event

The FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT event is dispatched after the Form::submit() once the model and view data have been denormalized.

It can be used to fetch data after denormalization.

Form Events Information Table

Data Type Value
Model data Normalized data reverse-transformed using a model transformer
Normalized data Same as in FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT
View data Normalized data transformed using a view transformer

警告

At this point, you cannot add or remove fields to the form.

Registering Event Listeners or Event Subscribers

In order to be able to use Form events, you need to create an event listener or an event subscriber, and register it to an event.

The name of each of the “form” events is defined as a constant on the FormEvents class. Additionally, each event callback (listener or subscriber method) is passed a single argument, which is an instance of FormEvent. The event object contains a reference to the current state of the form, and the current data being processed.

Name FormEvents Constant Event’s Data
form.pre_set_data FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA Model data
form.post_set_data FormEvents::POST_SET_DATA Model data
form.pre_bind FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT Request data
form.bind FormEvents::SUBMIT Normalized data
form.post_bind FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT View data

2.3 新版功能: Before Symfony 2.3, FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT, FormEvents::SUBMIT and FormEvents::POST_SUBMIT were called FormEvents::PRE_BIND, FormEvents::BIND and FormEvents::POST_BIND.

警告

The FormEvents::PRE_BIND, FormEvents::BIND and FormEvents::POST_BIND constants will be removed in version 3.0 of Symfony. The event names still keep their original values, so make sure you use the FormEvents constants in your code for forward compatibility.

Event Listeners

An event listener may be any type of valid callable.

Creating and binding an event listener to the form is very easy:

// ...

use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvent;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvents;

$form = $formFactory->createBuilder()
    ->add('username', 'text')
    ->add('show_email', 'checkbox')
    ->addEventListener(FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT, function (FormEvent $event) {
        $user = $event->getData();
        $form = $event->getForm();

        if (!$user) {
            return;
        }

        // Check whether the user has chosen to display his email or not.
        // If the data was submitted previously, the additional value that is
        // included in the request variables needs to be removed.
        if (true === $user['show_email']) {
            $form->add('email', 'email');
        } else {
            unset($user['email']);
            $event->setData($user);
        }
    })
    ->getForm();

// ...

When you have created a form type class, you can use one of its methods as a callback for better readability:

// ...

class SubscriptionType extends AbstractType
{
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder->add('username', 'text');
        $builder->add('show_email', 'checkbox');
        $builder->addEventListener(
            FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA,
            array($this, 'onPreSetData')
        );
    }

    public function onPreSetData(FormEvent $event)
    {
        // ...
    }
}

Event Subscribers

Event subscribers have different uses:

  • Improving readability;
  • Listening to multiple events;
  • Regrouping multiple listeners inside a single class.
use Symfony\Component\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvent;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormEvents;

class AddEmailFieldListener implements EventSubscriberInterface
{
    public static function getSubscribedEvents()
    {
        return array(
            FormEvents::PRE_SET_DATA => 'onPreSetData',
            FormEvents::PRE_SUBMIT   => 'onPreSubmit',
        );
    }

    public function onPreSetData(FormEvent $event)
    {
        $user = $event->getData();
        $form = $event->getForm();

        // Check whether the user from the initial data has chosen to
        // display his email or not.
        if (true === $user->isShowEmail()) {
            $form->add('email', 'email');
        }
    }

    public function onPreSubmit(FormEvent $event)
    {
        $user = $event->getData();
        $form = $event->getForm();

        if (!$user) {
            return;
        }

        // Check whether the user has chosen to display his email or not.
        // If the data was submitted previously, the additional value that
        // is included in the request variables needs to be removed.
        if (true === $user['show_email']) {
            $form->add('email', 'email');
        } else {
            unset($user['email']);
            $event->setData($user);
        }
    }
}

To register the event subscriber, use the addEventSubscriber() method:

// ...

$form = $formFactory->createBuilder()
    ->add('username', 'text')
    ->add('show_email', 'checkbox')
    ->addEventSubscriber(new AddEmailFieldListener())
    ->getForm();

// ...