3-list-search-show-configuration.md

Chapter 3. List, Search and Show Views Configuration

This chaper explains how to customize the list, search and show views. You'll learn all their configuration options, how to override or tweak their templates and how to completely override their behavior with custom controllers and Symfony events.

List, Search and Show Views

The List View displays the list of items that match the given criteria and provides automatic pagination and column sorting:

The Search View is used to display the results of any query performed by the user. It reuses most of the design and features of the list view to ensure a consistent user experience:

The Show View is used when displaying the contents of any entity:

General Configuration

In order to make examples more concise, this section only shows the configuration for the list view, but you can apply the same options to the other search and show views.

Customize the Title of the Page

Page titles display by default the name of the entity. Define the title option to set a custom page title:

# app/config/config.yml
easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            label: 'Customers'
            list:
                title: "Most recent customers"
        # ...

The title option can include the following special variables:

• %entity_label%, resolves to the value defined in the label option of the entity. If you haven't defined it, this value will be equal to the entity name. In the example above, this value would be Customers.
• %entity_name%, resolves to the entity name, which is the YAML key used to configure the entity in the backend configuration file. In the example above, this value would be Customer.
• %entity_id%, it's only available for the show view and it resolves to the value of the primary key of the entity being showed. Even if the option is called entity_id, it also works for primary keys with names different from id.

Beware that, in Symfony applications, YAML values enclosed with % and % have a special meaning (they are considered container parameters). Escape these values doubling the % characters:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            label: 'Customers'
            list:
                title: '%%entity_name%% listing'
        # ...

Customize the Number of Rows Displayed

By default, listings in the list and search display a maximum of 15 rows. Define the max_results option under the global list key to change this value:

# app/config/config.yml
easy_admin:
    list:
        max_results: 30
    # ...

Customize the Properties Displayed

By default, the show view displays all the entity properties. The list and search views make some "smart guesses" to decide which columns to display to make listings look good.

Use the fields option to explicitly set the properties to display:

# app/config/config.yml
easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                fields: ['id', 'firstName', 'lastName', 'phone', 'email']
    # ...

This option is useful to reorder the properties, because by default they are displayed in the same order as defined in the related Doctrine entity.

In the case of the search view, this fields option defines the properties included in the search query. Otherwise, the query is performed on all entity properties except those with special data types, such as binary, blob, object, etc.

Customize the Properties Appearance

When entity properties are not configured explicitly, the backend makes some smart guesses to display them with the most appropriate appearance according to their data types. If you prefer to control their appearance, start by using the extended field configuration:

# app/config/config.yml
easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                fields: ['id', 'name', { property: 'email', label: 'Contact' }]
    # ...

Instead of using a string to define the name of the property (e.g. 'email') you have to define a hash with the name of the property ({ property: 'email' }) and the options you want to define for it ({ ..., label: 'Contact' }).

If your entity contains lots of properties, consider using the alternative YAML syntax for sequences to improve the legibility of your backend configuration. The following example is equivalent to the above example:

# app/config/config.yml
easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                fields:
                    - id
                    - name
                    - { property: 'email', label: 'Contact' }
    # ...

These are the options that you can define for each field:

• property (mandatory): the name of the entity property which you want to display. The property option is the only mandatory option when using the extended field configuration format.
• label (optional): the title displayed for the property. The default title is the "humanized" version of the property name (e.g. published is displayed as Published and dateOfBirth as Date of birth).
• template (optional): the name of the custom template used to render the contents of the field. This option is fully explained later in this chapter.
• type (optional): the type of data displayed. This allows to select the most appropriate template to display the contents. The allowed values are:
  • Any of the Doctrine types: array, association, bigint, blob, boolean, date, datetime, datetimetz, decimal, float, guid, integer, json_array, object, simple_array, smallint, string, text, time.
  • Any of the custom EasyAdmin types: image, toggle, raw (they are explained later in this chapter).

The fields of the show view define another two options:

• help (optional): the help message displayed below the field contents.
• css_class (optional): the CSS class applied to the field container element.

TIP

In addition to these options defined by EasyAdmin, you can define any custom option for the fields. This way you can create very powerful backend customizations, as explained in the How to Define Custom Options for Entity Properties tutorial.

Formatting Dates and Numbers

Customizing Date and Time Properties

By default, these are the formats applied to date and time properties (read the date configuration options in the PHP manual if you don't understand the meaning of these formats):

• date: Y-m-d
• time: H:i:s
• datetime: F j, Y H:i

These default formats can be overridden in two ways: globally for all entities and locally for each entity property. The global formats option sets the formats for all entities:

easy_admin:
    formats:
        date:     'd/m/Y'
        time:     'H:i'
        datetime: 'd/m/Y H:i:s'
    entities:
        # ...

The values of the date, time and datetime options are passed to the format() method of the DateTime class, so you can use any of the date configuration options defined by PHP.

Date/time formatting can also be defined in each property configuration using the format option. This local option always overrides the global format:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'dateOfBirth', format: 'j/n/Y' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Customizing Numeric Properties

Numeric properties (bigint, integer, smallint, decimal, float) are formatted by default according to the locale of your Symfony application. This formatting can be overridden globally for all entities or locally for each property.

The global formats option applies the same formatting for all entities:

easy_admin:
    formats:
        # ...
        number: '%.2f'
    entities:
        # ...

In this case, the value of the number option is passed to the sprintf() function, so you can use any of the PHP format specifiers.

Numeric properties can also define their formatting using the format option. This local option always overrides the global format:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'serialNumber', format: '%010s' }
                    - { property: 'margin', format: '%01.2f' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Virtual Properties

Sometimes, it's useful to display values which are not entity properties. For example, if your Customer entity defines the firstName and lastName properties, you may want to display a column called Name with both values merged. These are called virtual properties because they don't really exist as Doctrine entity properties.

First add the virtual property to the entity configuration as any other property:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                # 'name' doesn't exist as a Doctrine entity property
                fields: ['id', 'name', 'phone', 'email']
    # ...

Now, if you reload the backend, you'll see that the virtual property only displays Inaccessible as its value. The reason is that name does not match any of the entity's properties. To fix this issue, add a new public method in your entity called getXxx() or xxx(), where xxx is the name of the virtual property (in this case the property is called name, so the method must be called getName() or name()):

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/** @ORM\Entity */
class Customer
{
    // ...

    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->getFirstName().' '.$this->getLastName();
    }
}

That's it. Reload your backend and now you'll see the value of this virtual property. By default, virtual properties are displayed as text contents. If your virtual property is a boolean value or a date, use the type option to set a more appropriate data type:

# in this example, the virtual properties 'is_eligible' and 'last_contact' define
# their 'type' option to avoid displaying them as regular text contents
easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Customer
            list:
                fields:
                    - 'id'
                    - { property: 'is_eligible',  type: 'boolean' }
                    - { property: 'last_contact', type: 'datetime' }
    # ...

The main limitation of virtual properties is that you cannot sort listings using these fields.

EasyAdmin Data Types

In addition to the Doctrine data types, properties can use any of the following data types defined by EasyAdmin.

Email Data Type

It displays the contents of the property as a clickable mailto: link:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\User
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'contact', type: 'email' }
                    # ...
    # ...

URL Data Type

It displays the contents of the property as a clickable link which opens in a new browser tab:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\User
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'blogUrl', type: 'url' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Telephone Data Type

It displays the contents of the property as a clickable telephone number. Beware that some browsers don't support these links:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\User
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'workPhoneNumber', type: 'tel' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Toogle and Boolean Data Types

If an entity is editable, the list view applies the type: 'toggle' option to all the boolean properties. This data type makes these properties be rendered as "flip switches" that allow to toggle their values very easily:

When you change the value of any boolean property, an Ajax request is made to actually change that value in the database. If something goes wrong, the switch automatically returns to its original value and it disables itself until the page is refreshed to avoid further issues:

In you prefer to disable these "toggles", define the type of the property explicitly as boolean:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'hasStock', type: 'boolean' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Now the boolean value is rendered as a simple label and its value cannot be modified from the list view:

Image Data Type

If any of your properties stores the URL or path of an image, this type allows you to display the actual image instead of its path. In most cases, you just need to set the type property to image.

In the following example, the photo property is displayed as a <img> HTML element whose src attribute is the value stored in the property:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'photo', type: 'image' }
                    # ...
    # ...

If the property stores relative paths, define the base_path option to set the path to be prefixed to the image path:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'photo', type: 'image', base_path: '/img/' }
                    # ...
    # ...

The value of the base_path can be a relative or absolute URL and even a Symfony parameter:

# relative path
- { property: 'photo', type: 'image', base_path: '/img/products/' }

# absolute path pointing to an external host
- { property: 'photo', type: 'image', base_path: 'http://static.acme.org/img/' }

# Symfony container parameter
- { property: 'photo', type: 'image', base_path: '%vich_uploader.mappings.product_image%' }

The image base path can also be set in the entity, to avoid repeating its value for different properties or different views:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            image_base_path: 'http://static.acme.org/img/'
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'photo', type: 'image' }
                    # ...
    # ...

The base paths defined for a property always have priority over the one defined globally for the entity.

Raw Data Type

All the string-based data types are escaped before displaying them. For that reason, if the property stores HTML content, you'll see the HTML tags instead of the rendered HTML content. In case you want to display the contents unescaped, define the type option with a raw value:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Product:
            class: AppBundle\Entity\Product
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'features', type: 'raw' }
                    # ...
    # ...

Advanced Design Configuration

This section explains how to completely customize the design of the list, search and show views overriding the default templates and fragments used to render them.

Default Templates

EasyAdmin defines seven Twig templates to create its interface. These are the four templates related to list, search and show views:

• layout, the common layout that decorates the list, edit, new and show templates;
• show, renders the contents stored by a given entity;
• list, renders the entity listings and the search results page;
• paginator, renders the paginator of the list view.

Depending on your needs you can override these templates in different ways.

Selecting the Template to Render

These are all the configuration options and paths checked before selecting the template to render (the first template which exists is used):

1. easy_admin.entities.<EntityName>.templates.<TemplateName> configuration option.
2. easy_admin.design.templates.<TemplateName> configuration option.
3. app/Resources/views/easy_admin/<EntityName>/<TemplateName>.html.twig
4. app/Resources/views/easy_admin/<TemplateName>.html.twig
5. @EasyAdmin/default/<TemplateName>.html.twig

The last one is the template path of the built-in templates and they are always available. The following sections explain the first four ways to customize the templates used by the backend.

Overriding the Default Templates By Configuration

If you prefer to define your custom templates in some specific location of the application, it's more convenient to use the templates option.

For example, to override the paginator template just for the Customer entity, create the paginator.html.twig template somewhere in your application and then, configure its location with the templates option:

easy_admin:
    entities:
        Customer:
            # ...
            templates:
                paginator: 'AppBundle:Default:fragments/_paginator.html.twig'
                # namespace syntax works too:
                # paginator: '@App/Default/fragments/_paginator.html.twig'

Similarly, to override some template for all entities, define the templates option under the global design option:

easy_admin:
    design:
        templates:
            paginator: 'AppBundle:Default:fragments/_paginator.html.twig'
            # namespace syntax works too:
            # paginator: '@App/Default/fragments/_paginator.html.twig'
    entities:
        # ...

Overriding the Default Templates By Convention

If you don't mind the location of your custom templates, consider creating them in the app/Resources/views/easy_admin/ directory. When the templates option is not defined, EasyAdmin looks into this directory before falling back to the default templates.

For example, to override the paginator template just for the Customer entity, you only need to create this template in this exact location (there is no need to define the templates configuration option):

your-project/
├─ app/
│  ├─ ...
│  └─ Resources/
│     └─ views/
│        └─ easy_admin/
│           └─ Customer/
│              └─ paginator.html.twig
├─ src/
├─ vendor/
└─ web/

In case you want to override the template for all entities, define the new template right under the easy_admin/ directory:

your-project/
├─ app/
│  ├─ ...
│  └─ Resources/
│     └─ views/
│        └─ easy_admin/
│           └─ paginator.html.twig
├─ src/
├─ vendor/
└─ web/

Tweaking the Design of the Default Templates

Most often than not, customizing the design of the backend is a matter of just tweaking some element of the default templates. The easiest way to do that is to create a new template that extends from the default one and override just the specific Twig block you want to customize.

Suppose you want to change the search form of the list view. First, create a new list.html.twig template as explained in the previous sections. Then, make your template extend from the default list.html.twig template:

{% extends '@EasyAdmin/default/list.html.twig' %}

{# ... #}

Lastly, override the search_action block to just change that template fragment:

{% extends '@EasyAdmin/default/list.html.twig' %}

{% block search_action %}
    {# ... #}
{% endblock %}

Customizing the Template Used to Render Each Property Type

In the list, search and show views, the value of each property is rendered with a different template according to its type. For example, properties of type string are rendered with the field_string.html.twig template.

These are all the available templates for each property type:

• field_array.html.twig
• field_association.html.twig, renders properties that store Doctrine associations.
• field_bigint.html.twig
• field_boolean.html.twig
• field_date.html.twig
• field_datetime.html.twig
• field_datetimetz.html.twig
• field_decimal.html.twig
• field_float.html.twig
• field_id.html.twig, special template to render any property called id. This avoids formatting the value of the primary key as a numeric value, with decimals and thousand separators.
• field_image.html.twig, related to the special image data type defined by EasyAdmin.
• field_integer.html.twig
• field_raw.html.twig, related to the special raw data type defined by EasyAdmin.
• field_simple_array.html.twig
• field_smallint.html.twig
• field_string.html.twig
• field_text.html.twig
• field_time.html.twig
• field_toggle.html.twig, related to the special toggle data type defined by EasyAdmin for boolean properties.

In addition, there are other templates defined to render special labels:

• label_empty.html.twig, used when the property to render is empty (it's used for arrays, collections, associations, images, etc.)
• label_inaccessible.html.twig, used when is not possible to access the value of the property because there is no getter or public property.
• label_null.html.twig, used when the value of the property is null.
• label_undefined.html.twig, used when any kind of error or exception happens when trying to access the value of the property.

The same template overriding mechanism explained in the previous sections can be applied to customize the template used to render each property. All the built-in templates are defined under the @EasyAdmin/default/... namespace, so your own templates can extend from them.

Suppose that in your backend you don't want to display a NULL text for null values and prefer to display a more human friendly value, such as Undefined. If you prefer convention over configuration, create this template in this exact location:

{# app/Resources/views/easy_admin/label_null.html.twig #}
<span class="null">Undefined</span>

Create this other template to override the label_null.html.twig template just for one specific entity called Invoice:

{# app/Resources/views/easy_admin/Invoice/label_null.html.twig #}
<span class="null">Unpaid</span>

If you prefer to store your custom templates somewhere in your application instead of the app/Resources/views/easy_admin/ directory, use the templates option to define their location:

easy_admin:
    design:
        templates:
            label_null: 'AppBundle:Default:labels/null.html.twig'
            # namespace syntax works too:
            # label_null: '@App/Default/labels/null.html.twig'
    # ...
    entities:
      Invoice:
        templates:
            label_null: 'AppBundle:Invoice:backend/label_null.html.twig'
            # namespace syntax works too:
            # label_null: '@App/Invoice/backend/label_null.html.twig'

Before customizing any of these templates, it's recommended to check out the contents of the default field_*.html.twig and label_*.html.twig templates, so you can learn about their features. Inside these templates you have access to the following variables:

• field_options, an array with the options configured for this field in the backend configuration file.
• item, an object with the current entity instance.
• value, the content of the property being rendered, which can be a variable of any type (string, numeric, boolean, array, etc.)
• view, a string with the name of the view where the field is being rendered (show or list).

Rendering Entity Properties with Custom Templates

The property templates explained in the previous section are applied to all the properties of the same type (strings, dates, arrays, etc.) However, when your backend is very complex, it may be useful to use a custom template just to render a single property of some entity.

To do so, define the name of the custom template in the template option of the property:

easy_admin:
    # ...
    entities:
        Invoice:
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'total', template: 'invoice_total.html.twig' }

The value of the total property is now rendered with invoice_total.html.twig template instead of the default field_float.html.twig template. As usual, EasyAdmin first looks for custom templates in the following locations (the first existing template is used):

1. app/Resources/views/easy_admin/<EntityName>/<TemplateOptionValue>
2. app/Resources/views/easy_admin/<TemplateOptionValue>

If none of these templates exist, the value of the template option is considered a Symfony template path, so you can use any of the valid template syntaxes:

easy_admin:
    # ...
    entities:
        Invoice:
            list:
                fields:
                    - { property: 'total', template: 'AppBundle:Invoice:total.html.twig' }
                    - { property: 'price', template: '@App/Invoice/unit_price.html.twig' }

Custom templates receive the same parameters as built-in templates (field_options, item, value and view).

Customizing the Behavior of list, search and show Views

In the previous sections you've learned how to override or tweak the templates associated with each view or property. This is the most common way to customize backends because it's simple yet powerful. However, EasyAdmin provides a more advanced customization mechanism based on PHP to customize the behavior of the backend.

Depending on your needs you can choose any of these two customization options (or combine both, if your backend is very complex):

• Customization based on controller methods, which is easy to set up but requires you to put all the customization code in a single controller which extends from the default AdminController provided by EasyAdmin.
• Customization based on Symfony events, which is hader to set up but allows you define the customization code anywhere in your application.

Customization Based on Controller Methods

This technique requires you to create a new controller in your Symfony application and make it extend from the default AdminController. Then you just add one or more methods in your controller to override the default ones.

The first step is to create a new controller anywhere in your Symfony application. Its class name or namespace doesn't matter as long as it extends the default AdminController:

// src/AppBundle/Controller/AdminController.php
namespace AppBundle\Controller;

use JavierEguiluz\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Controller\AdminController as BaseAdminController;

class AdminController extends BaseAdminController
{
}

Then you must update the routing configuration to associate the easyadmin route to the new controller. Open the app/config/routing.yml file and change the resource option of the easy_admin_bundle route:

# app/config/routing.yml
easy_admin_bundle:
    # resource: "@EasyAdminBundle/Controller/"           <-- REMOVE this line
    resource: "@AppBundle/Controller/AdminController.php" # <-- ADD this line
    type:     annotation
    prefix:   /admin

Save the changes and the backend will start using your own controller. Keep reading the practical examples of the next sections to learn which methods you can override in the controller.

Tweak the Default Actions for All Entities

This use case is only useful for very complex backends which need to override the entire behavior of some default action. Define a method with the same name of the view which you want to override (list, search or show):

// src/AppBundle/Controller/AdminController.php
namespace AppBundle\Controller;

use JavierEguiluz\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Controller\AdminController as BaseAdminController;

class AdminController extends BaseAdminController
{
    public function listAction()   { ... }
    public function searchAction() { ... }
    public function showAction()   { ... }
}

Take a look at the code of these methods in the original AdminController or extend from them to make your work easier.

Tweak the Default Actions for a Specific Entity

Before executing the general methods (listAction(), showAction(), etc.), the controller looks for the existence of methods created for the current entity. In particular, this is the syntax used to name these specific methods:

public function list<EntityName>Action()   { ... }
public function search<EntityName>Action() { ... }
public function show<EntityName>Action()   { ... }

TIP

Given the syntax of method names, it's recommended to use CamelCase notation to set the entity names.

Suppose that you want to customize the behavior of the list view just for the Product entity. Instead of overriding the general listAction() method and checking for the right entity, is easier to define this method in your controller:

// ...
class AdminController extends BaseAdminController
{
    public function listProductAction()
    {
        // ...
    }
}

Customization Based on Symfony Events

Lots of events are triggered during the execution of each backend action. Use Symfony's event listeners or event subscribers and hook to these events to modify the behavior of your backend.

EasyAdmin events are defined in the EasyAdmin\Event\EasyAdminEvents class and these are the most relevant events for list, search and show views.

Initialization related events

The initialize() method is executed before any other action method (listAction(), etc.) It checks for some common errors and initializes the variables used by the rest of the methods ($entity, $request, $config, etc.)

The two events related to this initialize() method are:

• PRE_INITIALIZE, executed just at the beginning of the method, before any variable has been initialized and any error checked.
• POST_INITIALIZE, executed at the very end of the method, just before executing the method associated with the current action.

Views related events

Each view defines two events which are dispatched respectively at the very beginning of each method and at the very end of it, just before executing the $this->render() instruction:

• PRE_LIST, POST_LIST
• PRE_SEARCH, POST_SEARCH
• PRE_SHOW, POST_SHOW

The Event Object

Event listeners and subscribers receive an event object based on the GenericEvent class defined by Symfony. The subject of the event depends on the current action:

• show action receives the current $entity object (this object is also available in the event arguments as $event['entity']).
• list and search actions receive the $paginator object which contains the collection of entities that meet the criteria of the current listing (this object is also available in the event arguments as $event['paginator']).

In addition, the event arguments contain all the action method variables. You can access to them through the getArgument() method or via the array access provided by the GenericEvent class.

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