Custom Field Type

Go back to /admin/article/new and click to create a new article. Oh, duh! We're not logged in as an admin anymore. Log out, then log back in with admin2@thespacebar.com password engage. Cool. Try /admin/article/new again.

Now, open ArticleFormType so we can take a closer look at the field types. Right now, we're using TextType, this is TextareaType, this is a DateTimeType and the author drop-down is an EntityType. We learned earlier that the purpose of each field type is really two things. First: it controls how the field is rendered, like <input type="text">, <textarea>, <input type="datetime-local"> or a <select> drop down. The second purpose of a field type is more important: it determines how the field's data is transformed.

For example, the publishedAt field has a nice date widget that was added by my browser. But, really, this is just an input text field. What I mean is: the data from this field is submitted as a raw text string. But ultimately, on my Article entity, the setPublishedAt method requires a DateTime object! That's the job of the DateTimeType: to convert that specially-formatted date string into a DateTime object.

And just as important, it also transforms the other direction. Go to the list page and click to edit an existing, published article. Inspect the published at field. Yep! When the form loaded, the DateTimeType took the DateTime object from the Article and transformed it back into the string format that's used for the value attribute.

Custom Field for Author

Why are we talking about this? Because I want to completely replace this author dropdown, to avoid a future problem. Imagine if we had 10,000 users. Hmm, in that case, it wouldn't be very easy to find the person we want - that would be a big drop-down! Plus, querying for 10,000 users and rendering them would be pretty slow!

So, new plan: I want to convert this into a text field where I can type the author's email. That's... easy! We could use EmailType for that! But, there's a catch: when we submit, we need to create a data transformer that's able to take that email address string and query for the User object. Because, ultimately, when the form calls setAuthor(), the value needs to be a User object.

Creating the Custom Form Type

To do all of this, we're going to create our first, custom form field type. Oh, and it's really cool: it looks almost identical to the normal form classes that we've already been building.

Create a new class: let's call it UserSelectTextType. Make it extend that same AbstractType that we've been extending in our other form classes. Then, go to the Code + Generate menu, or Command + N on a Mac, and select override methods. But this time, instead of overriding buildForm(), override getParent(). Inside, return TextType::class. Well, actually, EmailType::class might be better: it will make it render as an <input type="email">, but either will work fine.

Internally, the form fields have an inheritance system. For not-too-interesting technical reasons, the form classes don't use real class inheritance - we don't literally extend the TextType class. But, it works in a similar way.

By saying that TextType is our parent, we're saying that, unless we say otherwise, we want this field to look and behave like a normal TextType.

And... yea! We're basically set up. We're not doing anything special yet, but this should work! Go back over to ArticleFormType. Remove all of this EntityType stuff and say UserSelectTextType::class.

Let's try it! Move over, refresh and... it actually works! It's a text field filled with the firstName of the current author.

But... it only works thanks to some luck. When this field is rendered, the author field is a User object. The <input type="text"> field needs a string that it can use for its value attribute. By chance, our User class has a __toString() method. And so, we get the first name!

But check this out: when we submit! Big, hairy, giant error:

Expected argument of type User or null, string given

When that first name string is submitted, the TextType has no data transformer. And so, the form system ultimately calls setAuthor() and tries to pass it the string first name!

We'll fix this next with a data transformer.