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The |u Filter & String Component

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The questions on this page are way too long. We need to shorten them!

But before we do, this answer.question.question thing is bothering me: it looks... kind of confusing. Let's make this more clear by adding a custom method to our Answer class.

48 lines templates/answer/_answer.html.twig
<li class="mb-4">
{% if showQuestion|default(false) %}
<a
... lines 4 - 7
>
... line 9
{{ answer.question.question }}
</a>
{% endif %}
... lines 13 - 46
</li>

Adding Answer::getQuestionText() for Clarity

Open src/Entity/Answer.php. It doesn't matter where... but right by getQuestion() makes sense, add a new method: public function getQuestionText(), which will return a string.

136 lines src/Entity/Answer.php
... lines 1 - 11
class Answer
{
... lines 14 - 98
public function getQuestionText(): string
{
... lines 101 - 105
}
... lines 107 - 134
}

On a high level, this method makes me happy! If I have an Answer object, there's a good chance that I might want to easily get the question text related to this answer. Inside, I'll start by coding defensively: if not $this->getQuestion() - so if there is no related Question object, return empty quotes.

136 lines src/Entity/Answer.php
... lines 1 - 11
class Answer
{
... lines 14 - 98
public function getQuestionText(): string
{
if (!$this->getQuestion()) {
return '';
}
... lines 104 - 105
}
... lines 107 - 134
}

Now, you might be screaming:

Hey Ryan! I thought the question property was required in the database! How could we not have a question?

And... that's mostly right! We can't save an Answer to the database without a Question. But, in theory, we could create a new Answer object and call getQuestionText() on it before even trying to save it. To avoid an error if we did that, I'm coding defensively.

At the bottom, return $this->getQuestion->getQuestion()... but cast that to a string, just in case it's null... which, again, isn't likely since that property is required in the database, but it is technically possible.

136 lines src/Entity/Answer.php
... lines 1 - 11
class Answer
{
... lines 14 - 98
public function getQuestionText(): string
{
if (!$this->getQuestion()) {
return '';
}
return (string) $this->getQuestion()->getQuestion();
}
... lines 107 - 134
}

Thanks to the new method, over in _answer.html.twig, we can change this to {{ answer.questionText }}.

48 lines templates/answer/_answer.html.twig
<li class="mb-4">
{% if showQuestion|default(false) %}
<a
... lines 4 - 7
>
<strong>Question:</strong>
{{ answer.questionText }}
</a>
{% endif %}
... lines 13 - 46
</li>

So much nicer. But... the front-end still looks weird. So let's shorten the question string!

Twig's "u" Filter & the String Component

In Twig, we have a special filter called |u. This filter leverages Symfony's string component to give you what's called a UnicodeString object. It's basically an object that wraps this string... and gives you access to a bunch of useful methods. One of those methods is called truncate(). This means we can say .truncate(). Pass this 80 and '....

48 lines templates/answer/_answer.html.twig
<li class="mb-4">
{% if showQuestion|default(false) %}
<a
... lines 4 - 7
>
<strong>Question:</strong>
{{ answer.questionText|u.truncate(80, '...') }}
</a>
{% endif %}
... lines 13 - 46
</li>

So if the string is longer than 80 characters, truncate it and add a ... to the end. I love it!

Before we try this, search for "Symfony string component" to find its documentation. If you scroll down... you'll see a bunch of examples of what you can do - in PHP - with the string component. This u() function in PHP creates the same thing as our |u filter. Down here, you can see a ton of examples of what you can do - like lower-casing, title-casing, camel-casing... and a lot more... including a truncate() method. So if you ever need to mess around with strings - in Twig or PHP - don't forget about this component!

But... if we try this... it doesn't actually work! It says:

the u filter is part of the StringExtension... try running composer require twig/string-extra.

No problem! Find your terminal and run that:

composer require twig/string-extra

When it finishes... we can now refresh and see... awesome! We have truncated questions!

But look down at the web debug toolbar. This page made 8 queries... which seems like a lot just to render 10 answers. This is because we're suffering from the the N+1 query problem.

Next, let's learn more about this and see how we can join across a relationship to solve it.

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This tutorial also works great for Symfony 6!
Symfony 5.3

What PHP libraries does this tutorial use?

// composer.json
{
    "require": {
        "php": ">=8.1",
        "ext-ctype": "*",
        "ext-iconv": "*",
        "babdev/pagerfanta-bundle": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "composer/package-versions-deprecated": "^1.11", // 1.11.99.3
        "doctrine/doctrine-bundle": "^2.1", // 2.4.2
        "doctrine/doctrine-migrations-bundle": "^3.0", // 3.1.1
        "doctrine/orm": "^2.7", // 2.9.5
        "knplabs/knp-markdown-bundle": "^1.8", // 1.9.0
        "knplabs/knp-time-bundle": "^1.11", // v1.16.1
        "pagerfanta/doctrine-orm-adapter": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "pagerfanta/twig": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "sensio/framework-extra-bundle": "^6.0", // v6.2.1
        "stof/doctrine-extensions-bundle": "^1.4", // v1.6.0
        "symfony/asset": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/console": "5.3.*", // v5.3.7
        "symfony/dotenv": "5.3.*", // v5.3.7
        "symfony/flex": "^1.3.1", // v1.17.5
        "symfony/framework-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.7
        "symfony/monolog-bundle": "^3.0", // v3.7.0
        "symfony/runtime": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/stopwatch": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/twig-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/validator": "5.3.*", // v5.3.14
        "symfony/webpack-encore-bundle": "^1.7", // v1.12.0
        "symfony/yaml": "5.3.*", // v5.3.6
        "twig/extra-bundle": "^2.12|^3.0", // v3.3.1
        "twig/string-extra": "^3.3", // v3.3.1
        "twig/twig": "^2.12|^3.0" // v3.3.2
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle": "^3.3", // 3.4.0
        "symfony/debug-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/maker-bundle": "^1.15", // v1.33.0
        "symfony/var-dumper": "5.3.*", // v5.3.7
        "symfony/web-profiler-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.5
        "zenstruck/foundry": "^1.1" // v1.13.1
    }
}
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