Symfony Slots are ways to set simple data in one template, and have it displayed in another. It’s helpful if, for example, you want to set the Title in the layout from a controller actions view. Rather than ramble on about Symfony Slots, I’ll blast through how Slots are used in Symfony and leave you to figure the rest out:

First, this is how to retrieve a slot you have set (I will go over setting them in a moment):

$x = get_slot('slot_name'); echo $x;

Or you can just output the slot:

include_slot('slot_name');

Thats useful, for example, in your global template (layout).

You might want to set the slot – useful in a page-specific view, for example:

slot('title','The title');

Or you can do it like this, so you don’t have to explain to Mr. front-end developer why a single quote is breaking everything:

<?php slot('extra'); ?>
<meta foobarfoo />
<?php end_slot(); ?>

Finally, you might want to check if a slot exists:

if(has_slot('extra')):
  include_slot('extra');
endif;

So there you go. Bish, bash, bosh.

• have Symfony 1.2+
• have models set up
• have some sort of admin area set up, albeit without file uploads

This is *not* about storing file data in the database, it is about storing file *locations* in the database. The actual file data will be stored on the filesystem.

So lets get file uploads set up. Firstly, go into the form class for the model which you want to accept file uploads (you know, /lib/form/doctrine/YourModelForm.class.php).

You need to configure a widget and a validator. In case you’re not already familiar, the widget is (sort-of) the input type (textarea, drop-down box, etc) and the validator is the thing that says “Yes, this input is valid” or “No, this input is bad”. You choose various widgets and various validators, each having their own subset of options.

In the Form class, add a configure function. Make sure it calls the parent configure function so all the base config happens!

class MyForm extends BaseMyForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    parent::configure();
  }
}

Now, add a widget to your field. Note that where it says “the_image_url”, that’s simply what I’ve called the column in my schema. You might have called your column “image” or “file” or something – so update it as necesarry.

class MyForm extends BaseMyForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    parent::configure();
 
    $this->widgetSchema['the_image_url'] = new sfWidgetFormInputFileEditable(array(
      'label'     => 'The Image',
      'file_src'  => '/uploads/images/'.$this->getObject()->getTheImageUrl(),
      'is_image'  => true,
      'edit_mode' => !$this->isNew(),
      'template'  => '
<div>%file%%input%%delete% %delete_label%</div>
'
    ));
  }
}

Nearly done – add a validator. In my case I will only allow images, so I set ‘web_images’ as the mime_types option:

class MyForm extends BaseMyForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    parent::configure();
 
    $this->widgetSchema['the_image_url'] = new sfWidgetFormInputFileEditable(array(
      'label'     => 'The Image',
      'file_src'  => '/uploads/images/'.$this->getObject()->getTheImageUrl(),
      'is_image'  => true,
      'edit_mode' => !$this->isNew(),
      'template'  => '
<div>%file%%input%%delete% %delete_label%</div>
'
    ));
 
    $this->validatorSchema['the_image_url'] = new sfValidatorFile(array(
      'required'   => false,
      'path'       => sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir').'/images',
      'mime_types' => 'web_images',
    ))
  }
}

And finally, add a ‘delete’ button so you can delete the image (optional, but if you don’t do this, you should probably remove the %delete% stuff from the template section of the file field’s widget!)

class MyForm extends BaseMyForm
{
  public function configure()
  {
    parent::configure();
 
    $this->widgetSchema['the_image_url'] = new sfWidgetFormInputFileEditable(array(
      'label'     => 'The Image',
      'file_src'  => '/uploads/images/'.$this->getObject()->getTheImageUrl(),
      'is_image'  => true,
      'edit_mode' => !$this->isNew(),
      'template'  => '
<div>%file%%input%%delete% %delete_label%</div>
'
    ));
 
    $this->validatorSchema['the_image_url'] = new sfValidatorFile(array(
      'required'   => false,
      'path'       => sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir').'/images',
      'mime_types' => 'web_images',
    ))
 
    $this->validatorSchema['feature_image_url_delete'] = new sfValidatorPass();
 
  }
 
}

Then go for a “symfony cc”, generate your admin area if you haven’t already, and enjoy your lovely file uploads

Hope that helps.

$my_model->getMyOutput('param1','param2');

The output would be escaped – for example I’d get “<b>this is bold</b>” rather than “this is bold“. The usual $my_model->getRaw(’MyOutput’) didn’t help, as it doesn’t accept parameters (actually I expected it to take an optional second parameter, being an array of parameters, and was quite suprised to find that wasn’t the case).

A quick note – incase you weren’t already aware – calling $model->getRaw(’Column’); will get the unescaped version of $model->getColumn;

The solution is there, sitting happily in the documentation. But I want to give you a Google insta-answer. What you need to do is put ESC_RAW as the last parameter:

$my_model->getMyOutput('param1','param2',ESC_RAW);

Then your template gets the raw output of the function you’re calling, rather than automagically escaping the data for you.