How to render TWIG output to a variable for later use (symfony2)?

Question

Instead of doing this rendering of each slide in my TWIG like this (see line 6):

{# loop out the slides #}
{% for c in contents %}
    {% set i=i+1 %} {# increase slide number #}
    <div id="slide{{ i }}" class="slide" style="z-index:{{ i }};">
        {# the slide itself, rendered by it's own template #}
        {% include 'BizTVArchiveBundle:ContentTemplate:'~c.template~'/view.html.twig' with {'contents': c, 'ordernumber': i} %} 
    </div>
{% endfor %}

...Instead I would like to keep all of that logic in the controller, to just deliver to the view an array of ready slides. How can I do something like this (see line 9):

    //do stuff...
    foreach ($container->getContent() as $c) {
                $content[$i]['title'] = $c->getTitle();
                $content[$i]['sort'] = $c->getSortOrder();
                $content[$i]['data'] = $c->getData();
                $content[$i]['template'] = $c->getTemplate()->getId();
                $content[$i]['duration'] = $this->extract_seconds($c); 

                $content[$i]['html'] = $this->render('BizTVArchiveBundle:ContentTemplate:'.$content[$i]['template'].'/view.html.twig', array(
                    'contents'=> $content[$i],
                    'ordernumber' => 99,
                ));
    }

All it gives me at the moment (the contents of $content[$i]['html']) is

{"headers":{}}

Solution 1

It's better if you include the template in the template, this way you keep the templating rendering in the view layer and the logic in the controller layer.

But well, if you really want it...

You can use 2 services to do that: twig is using the Twig_Environment or templating.engine.twig which is a templating layer build in Symfony2 for Twig, this can be easily switched ot templating.engine.php.

If you use the twig service, you can see the twig docs on how to use it:

$template = $this->get('twig')->render('/full/path/to/Resources/views/'.$content[$i]['template'].'/view.html.twig', array(...));

If you use the templating.engine.twig service, see the templating docs on how to use it, which is almost exact the same as the Twig_Environment.

Solution 2

You can get content form rendered object like this:

$this->render('BizTVArchiveBundle:ContentTemplate:Some.html.twig', array())->getContent();

Solution 3

Within a twig template, you can set the value of a printed variable like this:

{% set rendered %}
  {{ var_to_print }}
{% endset %}

Solution 4

That is because $this->render() returns a Response object. Instead of $this->render(), use $this->renderView().

View more solutions

Comments

[Matt Welander]

How can I know what to specify the path in relation to? Like "where am I" when I start typing the path, am I in www? in my app folder? am I in my sym2project/web like usually (run from app.php?)?

[Wouter J]

@MattiasSvensson you can use the __DIR__ constant, which is the dir of the PHP file that uses that constant. Or you can use a template resolver (not sure how that service is called) to resolve to known Bundle:Controller:view format to an absolute path

[Matt Welander]

I tried DIR . '/../../ArchiveBundle/Resources/views/ but it just throws me an error that it cant find the template. I know it's there. Maybe the ../ is not allowed here? I also tried specifying the full path manually (based on the format of DIR) which in my case is '/var/www/biztv/src/BizTV/ArchiveBundle/Resources/views/Cont‌​entTemplate/28/view.‌​html.twig' but I get the same error =(

[Dante Cervantes]

is not working, it says Call to a member function getContent() on string

[Ismael Miguel]

I was surprised when I tried this. It works in old 1.xx versions and 2.xx versions as well. Not sure about 0.xx versions, but I doubt that those work.

[Phil]

This seems to work although there is no mention of renderView in the docs

[MilanG]

Wow, this is a real diamond! I was looking for this for a long time.