11.

Generating URLs

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We now have two pages: the HTML /genus/{genusName} page and the JSON endpoint. Ok ok, the JSON endpoint isn't really a page, at least not in the traditional sense. But pretend it is for a second. Pretend that we want to link from the HTML page to the JSON endpoint so the user can see it. Yes yes, we're going to do something fancier with JavaScript in a minute, but stay with me: this is important.

In show.html.twig, get rid of all this notes stuff because we're not passing in a notes variable anymore. Instead, near the top, add a new anchor tag. I want to put the URL to the getNotesAction page. Fill this in with /genus/{{ name }}/notes.

Perfect right! Wrong! Ok, only kind of wrong. This will work: you can click the link and go that URL. But this kinda sucks: if I decided that I needed to change the URL for this route, we would need to hunt down and update every link on the site. That's ridiculous.

Instead, routing has a second purpose: the ability to generate the URL to a specific route. But to do that, you need to give the route a unique name. After the URL, add comma and name="genus_show_notes":

// ... lines 1 - 10
class GenusController extends Controller
{
// ... lines 13 - 22
/**
* @Route("/genus/{genusName}/notes", name="genus_show_notes")
* @Method("GET")
*/
public function getNotesAction($genusName)
{
// ... lines 29 - 38
}
}

The name can be anything, but it's usually underscored and lowercased.

The Twig path() Function

To generate a URL in Twig, use the path() function. This has two arguments. The first is the name of the route - genus_show_notes. The second, which is optional, is an associative array. In Twig, an associative array is written using { }, just like JavaScript or JSON. Here, pass in the values for any wildcards that are in the route. This route has {genusName}, so pass it genusName set to the name variable:

29 lines | app/Resources/views/genus/show.html.twig
// ... lines 1 - 4
{% block body %}
<h2 class="genus-name">{{ name }}</h2>
<a href="{{ path('genus_show_notes', {'genusName': name}) }}">Json Notes</a>
// ... lines 9 - 27
{% endblock %}

Ok, go back and refresh! This generates the same URL... so that might seem kind of boring. But if you ever need to change the URL for the route, all the links would automatically update. When you're moving fast to build something amazing, that's huge.

Linking to a JSON endpoint isn't realistic. Let's do what we originally planned: use JavaScript to give us a dynamic frontend.