3. Templates

SonataAdminBundle comes with a significant amount of twig files used to display the different parts of each Admin action’s page. If you read the Templates part of the Architecture section of this guide, you should know by now how these are organized in the views folder. If you haven’t, now would be a good time to do it.

Besides these, some other views files are included from the storage layer. As their content and structure are specific to each implementation, they are not discussed here, but it’s important that you keep in mind that they exist and are as relevant as the view files included directly in SonataAdminBundle.

3.1. Global Templates

SonataAdminBundle views are implemented using twig files, and take full advantage of its inheritance capabilities. As such, even the most simple page is actually rendered using many different twig files. At the end of that twig inheritance hierarchy is always one of two files:

  • layout: @SonataAdmin/standard_layout.html.twig

  • ajax: @SonataAdmin/ajax_layout.html.twig

As you might have guessed from their names, the first is used in ‘standard’ request and the other for AJAX calls. The @SonataAdmin/standard_layout.html.twig contains several elements which exist across the whole page, like the logo, title, upper menu and menu. It also includes the base CSS and JavaScript files and libraries used across the whole administration section. The AJAX template doesn’t include any of these elements.

3.2. Dashboard Template

The template used for rendering the dashboard can also be configured. See the Dashboard page for more information

3.3. CRUDController Actions Templates

As seen before, the CRUDController has several actions that allow you to manipulate your model instances. Each of those actions uses a specific template file to render its content. By default, SonataAdminBundle uses the following templates for their matching action:

  • list : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/list.html.twig

  • show : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/show.html.twig

  • edit : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/edit.html.twig

  • history : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/history.html.twig

  • preview : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/preview.html.twig

  • delete : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/delete.html.twig

  • batch_confirmation : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/batch_confirmation.html.twig

  • acl : @SonataAdmin/CRUD/acl.html.twig

Notice that all these templates extend other templates, and some do only that. This inheritance architecture is designed to help you to make customizations by extending these templates in your own bundle, rather than rewriting everything.

If you look closely, all of these templates ultimately extend the base_template variable that’s passed from the controller. This variable will always take the value of one of the above mentioned global templates, and this is how changes made to those files affect all the SonataAdminBundle interface.

3.4. Row Templates

It is possible to completely change how each row of results is rendered in the list view, by customizing the inner_list_row and base_list_field templates. For more information about this, see the Row templates cookbook entry.

3.5. Other Templates

There are several other templates that can be customized, enabling you to fine-tune SonataAdminBundle:

  • user_block : customizes the Twig block rendered by default in the top right corner of the admin interface, containing user information. Empty by default, see SonataUserBundle for a real example.

  • add_block : customizes the Twig block rendered by default in the top right corner of the admin interface, providing quick access to create operations on available admin classes.

  • history_revision_timestamp: customizes the way timestamps are rendered when using history related actions.

  • action : a generic template you can use for your custom actions

  • short_object_description : used by the getShortObjectDescriptionAction action from the HelperController, this template displays a small description of a model instance.

  • list_block : the template used to render the dashboard’s admin mapping lists. More info on the Dashboard page.

  • batch: template used to render the checkboxes that precede each instance on list views.

  • select : when loading list views as part of sonata_admin form types, this template is used to create a button that allows you to select the matching line.

  • pager_links : renders the list of pages displayed at the end of the list view (when more than one page exists)

  • pager_results : renders the dropdown that lets you choose the number of elements per page on list views

3.6. Configuring templates

The main goal of this template structure is to make it comfortable for you to customize the ones you need. You can extend the ones you want in your own bundle, and tell SonataAdminBundle to use your templates instead of the default ones. You can do so in several ways.

You can specify your templates in the config file:

# config/packages/sonata_admin.yaml

sonata_admin:
    templates:
        layout:                     '@SonataAdmin/standard_layout.html.twig'
        ajax:                       '@SonataAdmin/ajax_layout.html.twig'
        list:                       '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/list.html.twig'
        show:                       '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/show.html.twig'
        show_compare:               '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/show_compare.html.twig'
        edit:                       '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/edit.html.twig'
        history:                    '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/history.html.twig'
        preview:                    '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/preview.html.twig'
        delete:                     '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/delete.html.twig'
        batch:                      '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/list__batch.html.twig'
        acl:                        '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/acl.html.twig'
        action:                     '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/action.html.twig'
        select:                     '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/list__select.html.twig'
        filter:                     '@SonataAdmin/Form/filter_admin_fields.html.twig'
        dashboard:                  '@SonataAdmin/Core/dashboard.html.twig'
        search:                     '@SonataAdmin/Core/search.html.twig'
        batch_confirmation:         '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/batch_confirmation.html.twig'
        inner_list_row:             '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/list_inner_row.html.twig'
        base_list_field:            '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/base_list_field.html.twig'
        list_block:                 '@SonataAdmin/Block/block_admin_list.html.twig'
        user_block:                 '@SonataAdmin/Core/user_block.html.twig'
        add_block:                  '@SonataAdmin/Core/add_block.html.twig'
        pager_links:                '@SonataAdmin/Pager/links.html.twig'
        pager_results:              '@SonataAdmin/Pager/results.html.twig'
        tab_menu_template:          '@SonataAdmin/Core/tab_menu_template.html.twig'
        history_revision_timestamp: '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/history_revision_timestamp.html.twig'
        short_object_description:   '@SonataAdmin/Helper/short-object-description.html.twig'
        search_result_block:        '@SonataAdmin/Block/block_search_result.html.twig'
        action_create:              '@SonataAdmin/CRUD/dashboard__action_create.html.twig'
        button_acl:                 '@SonataAdmin/Button/acl_button.html.twig'
        button_create:              '@SonataAdmin/Button/create_button.html.twig'
        button_edit:                '@SonataAdmin/Button/edit_button.html.twig'
        button_history:             '@SonataAdmin/Button/history_button.html.twig'
        button_list:                '@SonataAdmin/Button/list_button.html.twig'
        button_show:                '@SonataAdmin/Button/show_button.html.twig'
        form_theme:                 []
        filter_theme:               []

Warning

Notice that this is a global change, meaning it will affect all model mappings automatically, both for Admin mappings defined by you and by other bundles.

If you wish, you can specify custom templates on a per Admin mapping basis. Internally, the CRUDController fetches this information from the TemplateRegistry class instance that belongs with the Admin, so you can specify the templates to use in the Admin service definition:

# config/services.yaml

services:
    app.admin.post:
        class: App\Admin\PostAdmin
        calls:
            - [setTemplate, ['edit', 'PostAdmin/edit.html.twig']]
        tags:
            - { name: sonata.admin, model_class: App\Entity\Post, manager_type: orm, group: 'Content', label: 'Post' }

Note

A setTemplates(array $templates) (notice the plural) method also exists, that allows you to set multiple templates at once.

Changes made using the setTemplate() and setTemplates() methods override the customizations made in the configuration file, so you can specify a global custom template and then override that customization on a specific Admin class.

3.7. Finding configured templates

Each Admin has a TemplateRegistry service connected to it that holds the templates registered through the configuration above. Through the method getTemplate($name) of that class, you can access the templates set for that Admin. The TemplateRegistry is available through $this->getTemplateRegistry() within the Admin. Using the service container the template registries can be accessed outside an Admin. Use the Admin code + .template_registry as the service ID (i.e. “app.admin.post” uses the Template Registry “app.admin.post.template_registry”).

The TemplateRegistry service that holds the global templates can be accessed using the service ID “sonata.admin.global_template_registry”.

Within Twig templates, you can use the get_admin_template($name, $adminCode) function to access the templates of the current Admin, or the get_global_template($name) function to access global templates.

{% extends get_admin_template('base_list_field', admin.code) %}

{% block field %}
    {# ... #}
{% endblock %}