[Routing] Routes only for generation, not matching

[acasademont]

We would like to know if there is interest in having a new attribute in a Route that tags it as a generation-only route or a generation-and-matching route. Let me explain myself why would that be useful.

We have a backend in a different symfony repo that needs to generate routes for the frontend (emails, batch processing of multiple things, etc). We can import the routes of the frontend with the "host" param, but those routes will be also put in the route matcher, which it's not necessary, adds overhead, we only need them for generation purposes.

I think it's not complicated to add such a new option and only put those tagged routes in the UrlGenerator. Of course by default all routes would be put in the UrlMatchr and UrlGenerator to have BC.

[inmarelibero]

could Symfony/Component/Routing/RouteCollection.html remove() method help you?

[LouTerrailloune]

Maybe you can create another Router instance, load your frontend routes, and use it's generator to generate your routes.

[Koc]

As workaround for this we are adding method requirements:

    methods: [FOR_GENERATING_ONLY]

[acasademont]

@inmarelibero mmm i can't see how that could be useful, i don't have the chance to remove the route.

@LouTerrailloune yeah, that's a feasible option, but needs quite a lot of work!

@Koc as you said...it's a workaround :p

[inmarelibero]

because you could for example:

1. implement a listener (kernel.request maybe)

2. scan for all routes loaded by kernel with:

   $loadedRoutes = $router->getRouteCollection()->all();
   

3. remove routes not having the option (eg.) "include_in_import"

   $routeCollection = $router->getRouteCollection()
   
   foreach ($routes as $route) {
     if (!$route->getOption("include_in_import")) {
   
       # not so sure of $route->getOption('name), should be ok but need to investigate
       $routeCollection->remove($route->getOption('name));  
   
     }
   }
   

references:

• Router->getRouteCollection()
• RouteCollection->all()
• Kernel events

[acasademont]

mmm but that's a big performance hit, it has to be done on every request, no way. That should be done only once on the cache:warmup phase, when the RouteGenerator and RouteMatcher are created

[inmarelibero]

even better, depends on what you need. I don't know your structure and your needs, just explained how it could work.

[Koc]

@inmarelibero proposed by you sollution will rebuild route matcher for each request. It is not production-ready solution

[inmarelibero]

again, my intention was to tell you "ah ok, I can manipulate the router service and remove routes by name, cool!", not to provide you the definitive solution.

[fabpot]

Closing as this is not a feature we will add in Symfony.

[acasademont]

@fabpot would you reconsider this if there was a patch? I was actually working on a first implementation draft.

[fabpot]

@acasademont Personally, no as I don't think there are enough letigitimate uses cases and that there are some workarounds.

[LouTerrailloune]

@acasademont I think your are trying to solve a more general problem: 'how to share routes between different project', and this not really belongs to the routing component.

[acasademont]

@LouTerrailloune yes sure, but i can already do that, the problem is that the imported routes are also put in the RouteMatcher, not really a big issue at all...but maybe this could be avoided.