Twig Components

EXPERIMENTAL This component is currently experimental and is likely to change, or even change drastically.

Twig components give you the power to bind an object to a template, making it easier to render and re-use small template "units" - like an "alert", markup for a modal, or a category sidebar:

Every component consists of (1) a class:

// src/Components/AlertComponent.php
namespace App\Components;

use Symfony\UX\TwigComponent\Attribute\AsTwigComponent;

#[AsTwigComponent('alert')]
class AlertComponent
{
    public string $type = 'success';
    public string $message;
}

And (2) a corresponding template:

{# templates/components/alert.html.twig #}
<div class="alert alert-{{ this.type }}">
    {{ this.message }}
</div>

Done! Now render it wherever you want:

{{ component('alert', { message: 'Hello Twig Components!' }) }}

Enjoy your new component!

This brings the familiar "component" system from client-side frameworks into Symfony. Combine this with Live Components, to create an interactive frontend with automatic, Ajax-powered rendering.

Want a demo? Check out https://github.com/weaverryan/live-demo.

Installation

Let's get this thing installed! Run:

composer require symfony/ux-twig-component

That's it! We're ready to go!

Creating a Basic Component

Let's create a reusable "alert" element that we can use to show success or error messages across our site. Step 1 is always to create a component that has an AsTwigComponent class attribute. Let's start as simple as possible:

// src/Components/AlertComponent.php
namespace App\Components;

use Symfony\UX\TwigComponent\Attribute\AsTwigComponent;

#[AsTwigComponent('alert')]
class AlertComponent
{
}

Note: If this class is auto-configured, and you're using Symfony 5.3+, then you're all set. Otherwise, register the service and tag it with twig.component.

Step 2 is to create a template for this component. By default, templates live in templates/components/{Component Name}.html.twig, where {Component Name} is whatever you passed as the first argument to the AsTwigComponent class attribute:

{# templates/components/alert.html.twig #}
<div class="alert alert-success">
    Success! You've created a Twig component!
</div>

This isn't very interesting yet... since the message is hardcoded into the template. But it's enough! Celebrate by rendering your component from any other Twig template:

{{ component('alert') }}

Done! You've just rendered your first Twig Component! Take a moment to fist pump - then come back!

Passing Data into your Component

Good start: but this isn't very interesting yet! To make our alert component reusable, we need to make the message and type (e.g. success, danger, etc) configurable. To do that, create a public property for each:

// src/Components/AlertComponent.php
// ...

#[AsTwigComponent('alert')]
class AlertComponent
{
+    public string $message;

+    public string $type = 'success';

    // ...
}

In the template, the AlertComponent instance is available via the this variable. Use it to render the two new properties:

<div class="alert alert-{{ this.type }}">
    {{ this.message }}
</div>

How can we populate the message and type properties? By passing them as a 2nd argument to the component() function when rendering:

{{ component('alert', { message: 'Successfully created!' }) }}

{{ component('alert', {
    type: 'danger',
    message: 'Danger Will Robinson!'
}) }}

Behind the scenes, a new AlertComponent will be instantiated and the message key (and type if passed) will be set onto the $message property of the object. Then, the component is rendered! If a property has a setter method (e.g. setMessage()), that will be called instead of setting the property directly.

Customize the Twig Template

You can customize the template used to render the template by passing it as the second argument to the AsTwigComponent attribute:

// src/Components/AlertComponent.php
// ...

-#[AsTwigComponent('alert')]
+#[AsTwigComponent('alert', 'my/custom/template.html.twig')]
class AlertComponent
{
    // ...
}

The mount() Method

If, for some reason, you don't want an option to the component() function to be set directly onto a property, you can, instead, create a mount() method in your component:

// src/Components/AlertComponent.php
// ...

#[AsTwigComponent('alert')]
class AlertComponent
{
    public string $message;
    public string $type = 'success';

    public function mount(bool $isSuccess = true)
    {
        $this->type = $isSuccess ? 'success' : 'danger';
    }

    // ...
}

The mount() method is called just one time immediately after your component is instantiated. Because the method has an $isSuccess argument, we can pass an isSuccess option when rendering the component:

{{ component('alert', {
    isSuccess: false,
    message: 'Danger Will Robinson!'
}) }}

If an option name matches an argument name in mount(), the option is passed as that argument and the component system will not try to set it directly on a property.

Fetching Services

Let's create a more complex example: a "featured products" component. You could choose to pass an array of Product objects into the component() function and set those on a $products property. But instead, let's allow the component to do the work of executing the query.

How? Components are services, which means autowiring works like normal. This example assumes you have a Product Doctrine entity and ProductRepository:

// src/Components/FeaturedProductsComponent.php
namespace App\Components;

use App\Repository\ProductRepository;
use Symfony\UX\TwigComponent\Attribute\AsTwigComponent;

#[AsTwigComponent('featured_products')]
class FeaturedProductsComponent
{
    private ProductRepository $productRepository;

    public function __construct(ProductRepository $productRepository)
    {
        $this->productRepository = $productRepository;
    }

    public function getProducts(): array
    {
        // an example method that returns an array of Products
        return $this->productRepository->findFeatured();
    }
}

In the template, the getProducts() method can be accessed via this.products:

{# templates/components/featured_products.html.twig #}

<div>
    <h3>Featured Products</h3>

    {% for product in this.products %}
        ...
    {% endfor %}
</div>

And because this component doesn't have any public properties that we need to populate, you can render it with:

{{ component('featured_products') }}

NOTE Because components are services, normal dependency injection can be used. However, each component service is registered with shared: false. That means that you can safely render the same component multiple times with different data because each component will be an independent instance.

Computed Properties

In the previous example, instead of querying for the featured products immediately (e.g. in __construct()), we created a getProducts() method and called that from the template via this.products.

This was done because, as a general rule, you should make your components as lazy as possible and store only the information you need on its properties (this also helps if you convert your component to a live component) later. With this setup, the query is only executed if and when the getProducts() method is actually called. This is very similar to the idea of "computed properties" in frameworks like Vue.

But there's no magic with the getProducts() method: if you call this.products multiple times in your template, the query would be executed multiple times.

To make your getProducts() method act like a true computed property (where its value is only evaluated the first time you call the method), you can store its result on a private property:

// src/Components/FeaturedProductsComponent.php
namespace App\Components;
// ...

#[AsTwigComponent('featured_products')]
class FeaturedProductsComponent
{
    private ProductRepository $productRepository;

+    private ?array $products = null;

    // ...

    public function getProducts(): array
    {
+        if ($this->products === null) {
+            $this->products = $this->productRepository->findFeatured();
+        }

-        return $this->productRepository->findFeatured();
+        return $this->products;
    }
}

Embedded Components

It's totally possible to embed one component into another. When you do this, there's nothing special to know: both components render independently. If you're using Live Components, then there are some guidelines related to how the re-rendering of parent and child components works. Read Live Embedded Components.

Contributing

Interested in contributing? Visit the main source for this repository: https://github.com/symfony/ux/tree/main/src/TwigComponent.

Have fun!