4.1. The Admin Class¶

The Admin class maps a specific model to the rich CRUD interface provided by SonataAdminBundle. In other words, using your Admin classes, you can configure what is shown by SonataAdminBundle in each CRUD action for the associated model. By now you’ve seen 3 of those actions in the getting started page: list, filter and form (for creation/editing). However, a fully configured Admin class can define more actions:

• list: The fields displayed in the list table
• filter: The fields available for filtering the list
• form: The fields used to create/edit the entity
• show: The fields used to show the entity
• Batch actions: Actions that can be performed on a group of entities (e.g. bulk delete)

The Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\Admin class is provided as an easy way to map your models, by extending it. However, any implementation of the Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\AdminInterface can be used to define an Admin service. For each Admin service, the following required dependencies are automatically injected by the bundle:

• ConfigurationPool: configuration pool where all Admin class instances are stored
• ModelManager: service which handles specific code relating to your persistence layer (e.g. Doctrine ORM)
• FormContractor: builds the forms for the edit/create views using the Symfony FormBuilder
• ShowBuilder: builds the show fields
• ListBuilder: builds the list fields
• DatagridBuilder: builds the filter fields
• Request: the received http request
• RouteBuilder: allows you to add routes for new actions and remove routes for default actions
• RouterGenerator: generates the different urls
• SecurityHandler: handles permissions for model instances and actions
• Validator: handles model validation
• Translator: generates translations
• LabelTranslatorStrategy: a strategy to use when generating labels
• MenuFactory: generates the side menu, depending on the current action

All of these dependencies have default values that you can override when declaring any of your Admin services. This is done using a call to the matching “setter”:

Here, we declare the same Admin service as in the Getting started with SonataAdminBundle chapter, but using a different label translator strategy, replacing the default one. Notice that sonata.admin.label.strategy.underscore is a service provided by SonataAdminBundle, but you could just as easily use a service of your own.

4.2. CRUDController¶

The CRUDController contains the actions you have available to manipulate your model instances, like create, list, edit or delete. It uses the Admin class to determine its behavior, like which fields to display in the edit form, or how to build the list view. Inside the CRUDController, you can access the Admin class instance via the $admin variable.

The CRUDController is no different from any other Symfony2 controller, meaning that you have all the usual options available to you, like getting services from the Dependency Injection Container (DIC).

This is particularly useful if you decide to extend the CRUDController to add new actions or change the behavior of existing ones. You can specify which controller to use when declaring the Admin service by passing it as the 3rd argument. For example to set the controller to AcmeDemoBundle:PostAdmin:

When extending CRUDController, remember that the Admin class already has a set of automatically injected dependencies that are useful when implementing several scenarios. Refer to the existing CRUDController actions for examples of how to get the best out of them.

4.3. Fields Definition¶

Your Admin class defines which of your model’s fields will be available in each action defined in your CRUDController. So, for each action, a list of field mappings is generated. These lists are implemented using the FieldDescriptionCollection class which stores instances of FieldDescriptionInterface. Picking up on our previous PostAdmin class example:

<?php
namespace Acme\DemoBundle\Admin;

use Sonata\AdminBundle\Admin\Admin;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\ListMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Datagrid\DatagridMapper;
use Sonata\AdminBundle\Form\FormMapper;

class PostAdmin extends Admin
{
   // Fields to be shown on create/edit forms
   protected function configureFormFields(FormMapper $formMapper)
   {
       $formMapper
           ->add('title', 'text', array('label' => 'Post Title'))
           ->add('author', 'entity', array('class' => 'Acme\DemoBundle\Entity\User'))
           ->add('body') //if no type is specified, SonataAdminBundle tries to guess it
       ;
   }

   // Fields to be shown on filter forms
   protected function configureDatagridFilters(DatagridMapper $datagridMapper)
   {
       $datagridMapper
           ->add('title')
           ->add('author')
       ;
   }

   // Fields to be shown on lists
   protected function configureListFields(ListMapper $listMapper)
   {
       $listMapper
           ->addIdentifier('title')
           ->add('slug')
           ->add('author')
       ;
   }
}

Internally, the provided Admin class will use these three functions to create three FieldDescriptionCollection instances:

• $formFieldDescriptions, containing three FieldDescriptionInterface instances for title, author and body
• $filterFieldDescriptions, containing two FieldDescriptionInterface instances for title and author
• $listFieldDescriptions, containing three FieldDescriptionInterface instances for title, slug and author

The actual FieldDescription implementation is provided by the storage abstraction bundle that you choose during the installation process, based on the BaseFieldDescription abstract class provided by SonataAdminBundle.

Each FieldDescription contains various details about a field mapping. Some of them are independent of the action in which they are used, like name or type, while others are used only in specific actions. More information can be found in the BaseFieldDescription class file.

In most scenarios, you will not actually need to handle the FieldDescription yourself. However, it is important that you know it exists and how it is used, as it sits at the core of SonataAdminBundle.

4.4. Templates¶

Like most actions, CRUDController actions use view files to render their output. SonataAdminBundle provides ready to use views as well as ways to easily customize them.

The current implementation uses Twig as the template engine. All templates are located in the Resources/views directory of the bundle.

There are two base templates, one of these is ultimately used in every action:

• SonataAdminBundle::standard_layout.html.twig
• SonataAdminBundle::ajax_layout.html.twig

Like the names say, one if for standard calls, the other one for AJAX.

The subfolders include Twig files for specific sections of SonataAdminBundle:

Block:

SonataBlockBundle block views. By default there is only one, which displays all the mapped classes on the dashboard

Button:

Buttons such as Add new or Delete that you can see across several CRUD actions

CRUD:

Base views for every CRUD action, plus several field views for each field type

Core:

Dashboard view, together with deprecated and stub twig files.

Form:

Views related to form rendering

Helper:

A view providing a short object description, as part of a specific form field type provided by SonataAdminBundle

Pager:

Pagination related view files

These will be discussed in greater detail in the specific Templates section, where you will also find instructions on how to configure SonataAdminBundle to use your templates instead of the default ones.

4.5. Managing Admin Service¶

Your Admin service definitions are parsed when Symfony2 is loaded, and handled by the Pool class. This class, available as the sonata.admin.pool service from the DIC, handles the Admin classes, lazy-loading them on demand (to reduce overhead) and matching each of them to a group. It is also responsible for handling the top level template files, administration panel title and logo.

4.6. Create child admins¶

Let us say you have a PostAdmin and a CommentAdmin. You can optionally declare the CommentAdmin to be a child of the PostAdmin. This will create new routes like, for example, /post/{id}/comment/list, where the comments will automatically be filtered by post.

To do this, you first need to call the addChild method in your PostAdmin service configuration :

<!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<service id="sonata.news.admin.post" class="Sonata\NewsBundle\Admin\PostAdmin">
    ...

    <call method="addChild">
        <argument type="service" id="sonata.news.admin.comment" />
    </call>
</service>

Then, you have to set the CommentAdmin parentAssociationMapping attribute to post :

<?php
namespace Sonata\NewsBundle\Admin;

...

class CommentAdmin extends Admin
{
    protected $parentAssociationMapping = 'post';

    // OR

    public function getParentAssociationMapping()
    {
        return 'post';
    }
}

It also possible to set a dot-separated value, like post.author, if your parent and child admins are not directly related.