single: Bundle; Best practices
There are 2 types of bundles:
- Application-specific bundles: only used to build your application;
- Reusable bundles: meant to be shared across many projects.
This article is all about how to structure your reusable bundles so that they're easy to configure and extend. Many of these recommendations do not apply to application bundles because you'll want to keep those as simple as possible. For application bundles, just follow the practices shown throughout the book and cookbook.
pair: Bundle; Naming conventions
A bundle is also a PHP namespace. The namespace must follow the technical interoperability standards for PHP 5.3 namespaces and class names: it starts with a vendor segment, followed by zero or more category segments, and it ends with the namespace short name, which must end with a Bundle suffix.
A namespace becomes a bundle as soon as you add a bundle class to it. The bundle class name must follow these simple rules:
- Use only alphanumeric characters and underscores;
- Use a CamelCased name;
- Use a descriptive and short name (no more than 2 words);
- Prefix the name with the concatenation of the vendor (and optionally the category namespaces);
- Suffix the name with
Bundle.
Here are some valid bundle namespaces and class names:
| Namespace | Bundle Class Name |
|---|---|
Acme\Bundle\BlogBundle |
AcmeBlogBundle |
Acme\Bundle\Social\BlogBundle |
AcmeSocialBlogBundle |
Acme\BlogBundle |
AcmeBlogBundle |
By convention, the getName() method of the bundle class should return the class name.
Note
If you share your bundle publicly, you must use the bundle class name as the name of the repository (AcmeBlogBundle and not BlogBundle for instance).
Note
Symfony2 core Bundles do not prefix the Bundle class with Symfony and always add a Bundle sub-namespace; for example: Symfony\\Bundle\\FrameworkBundle\\FrameworkBundle.
Each bundle has an alias, which is the lower-cased short version of the bundle name using underscores (acme_hello for AcmeHelloBundle, or acme_social_blog for Acme\Social\BlogBundle for instance). This alias is used to enforce uniqueness within a bundle (see below for some usage examples).
The basic directory structure of a HelloBundle bundle must read as follows:
XXX/...
HelloBundle/
HelloBundle.php
Controller/
Resources/
meta/
LICENSE
config/
doc/
index.rst
translations/
views/
public/
Tests/The XXX directory(ies) reflects the namespace structure of the bundle.
The following files are mandatory:
HelloBundle.php;Resources/meta/LICENSE: The full license for the code;Resources/doc/index.rst: The root file for the Bundle documentation.
Note
These conventions ensure that automated tools can rely on this default structure to work.
The depth of sub-directories should be kept to the minimal for most used classes and files (2 levels at a maximum). More levels can be defined for non-strategic, less-used files.
The bundle directory is read-only. If you need to write temporary files, store them under the cache/ or log/ directory of the host application. Tools can generate files in the bundle directory structure, but only if the generated files are going to be part of the repository.
The following classes and files have specific emplacements:
| Type | Directory |
|---|---|
| Commands | Command/ |
| Controllers | Controller/ |
| Service Container Extensions | DependencyInjection/ |
| Event Listeners | EventListener/ |
| Configuration | Resources/config/ |
| Web Resources | Resources/public/ |
| Translation files | Resources/translations/ |
| Templates | Resources/views/ |
| Unit and Functional Tests | Tests/ |
Note
When building a reusable bundle, model classes should be placed in the Model namespace. See /cookbook/doctrine/mapping_model_classes for how to handle the mapping with a compiler pass.
The bundle directory structure is used as the namespace hierarchy. For instance, a HelloController controller is stored in Bundle/HelloBundle/Controller/HelloController.php and the fully qualified class name is Bundle\HelloBundle\Controller\HelloController.
All classes and files must follow the Symfony2 coding standards </contributing/code/standards>.
Some classes should be seen as facades and should be as short as possible, like Commands, Helpers, Listeners, and Controllers.
Classes that connect to the event dispatcher should be suffixed with Listener.
Exceptions classes should be stored in an Exception sub-namespace.
A bundle must not embed third-party PHP libraries. It should rely on the standard Symfony2 autoloading instead.
A bundle should not embed third-party libraries written in JavaScript, CSS, or any other language.
A bundle should come with a test suite written with PHPUnit and stored under the Tests/ directory. Tests should follow the following principles:
- The test suite must be executable with a simple
phpunitcommand run from a sample application; - The functional tests should only be used to test the response output and some profiling information if you have some;
- The tests should cover at least 95% of the code base.
Note
A test suite must not contain AllTests.php scripts, but must rely on the existence of a phpunit.xml.dist file.
All classes and functions must come with full PHPDoc.
Extensive documentation should also be provided in the reStructuredText </contributing/documentation/format> format, under the Resources/doc/ directory; the Resources/doc/index.rst file is the only mandatory file and must be the entry point for the documentation.
In order to ease the installation of third-party bundles, consider using the following standardized instructions in your README.md file.
Installation
============
Step 1: Download the Bundle
---------------------------
Open a command console, enter your project directory and execute the
following command to download the latest stable version of this bundle:
```bash
$ composer require <package-name> "~1"
```
This command requires you to have Composer installed globally, as explained
in the [installation chapter](https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md)
of the Composer documentation.
Step 2: Enable the Bundle
-------------------------
Then, enable the bundle by adding the following line in the `app/AppKernel.php`
file of your project:
```php
<?php
// app/AppKernel.php
// ...
class AppKernel extends Kernel
{
public function registerBundles()
{
$bundles = array(
// ...
new <vendor>\<bundle-name>\<bundle-long-name>(),
);
// ...
}
// ...
}
```This template assumes that your bundle is in its 1.x version. If not, change the "~1" installation version accordingly ("~2", "~3", etc.)
Optionally, you can add more installation steps (Step 3, Step 4, etc.) to explain other required installation tasks, such as registering routes or dumping assets.
If the bundle provides routes, they must be prefixed with the bundle alias. For an AcmeBlogBundle for instance, all routes must be prefixed with acme_blog_.
If a bundle provides templates, they must use Twig. A bundle must not provide a main layout, except if it provides a full working application.
If a bundle provides message translations, they must be defined in the XLIFF format; the domain should be named after the bundle name (bundle.hello).
A bundle must not override existing messages from another bundle.
To provide more flexibility, a bundle can provide configurable settings by using the Symfony2 built-in mechanisms.
For simple configuration settings, rely on the default parameters entry of the Symfony2 configuration. Symfony2 parameters are simple key/value pairs; a value being any valid PHP value. Each parameter name should start with the bundle alias, though this is just a best-practice suggestion. The rest of the parameter name will use a period (.) to separate different parts (e.g. acme_hello.email.from).
The end user can provide values in any configuration file:
# app/config/config.yml
parameters:
acme_hello.email.from: fabien@example.com<!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<parameters>
<parameter key="acme_hello.email.from">fabien@example.com</parameter>
</parameters>// app/config/config.php
$container->setParameter('acme_hello.email.from', 'fabien@example.com');; app/config/config.ini
[parameters]
acme_hello.email.from = fabien@example.comRetrieve the configuration parameters in your code from the container:
$container->getParameter('acme_hello.email.from');Even if this mechanism is simple enough, you are highly encouraged to use the semantic configuration described in the cookbook.
Note
If you are defining services, they should also be prefixed with the bundle alias.
/cookbook/bundles/extension