This chapter describes the API to Twig and not the template language. It will be most useful as reference to those implementing the template interface to the application and not those who are creating Twig templates.
Twig uses a central object called the environment (of class
Twig_Environment). Instances of this class are used to store the
configuration and extensions, and are used to load templates from the file
system or other locations.
Most applications will create one Twig_Environment object on application
initialization and use that to load templates. In some cases it's however
useful to have multiple environments side by side, if different configurations
are in use.
The simplest way to configure Twig to load templates for your application looks roughly like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | require_once '/path/to/lib/Twig/Autoloader.php';
Twig_Autoloader::register();
$loader = new Twig_Loader_Filesystem('/path/to/templates');
$twig = new Twig_Environment($loader, array(
'cache' => '/path/to/compilation_cache',
));
|
This will create a template environment with the default settings and a loader
that looks up the templates in the /path/to/templates/ folder. Different
loaders are available and you can also write your own if you want to load
templates from a database or other resources.
Note
Notice that the second argument of the environment is an array of options.
The cache option is a compilation cache directory, where Twig caches
the compiled templates to avoid the parsing phase for sub-sequent
requests. It is very different from the cache you might want to add for
the evaluated templates. For such a need, you can use any available PHP
cache library.
To load a template from this environment you just have to call the
loadTemplate() method which then returns a Twig_Template instance:
1 | $template = $twig->loadTemplate('index.html');
|
To render the template with some variables, call the render() method:
1 | echo $template->render(array('the' => 'variables', 'go' => 'here'));
|
Note
The display() method is a shortcut to output the template directly.
You can also load and render the template in one fell swoop:
1 | echo $twig->render('index.html', array('the' => 'variables', 'go' => 'here'));
|
When creating a new Twig_Environment instance, you can pass an array of
options as the constructor second argument:
1 | $twig = new Twig_Environment($loader, array('debug' => true));
|
The following options are available:
debug: When set to true, the generated templates have a
__toString() method that you can use to display the generated nodes
(default to false).charset: The charset used by the templates (default to utf-8).base_template_class: The base template class to use for generated
templates (default to Twig_Template).cache: An absolute path where to store the compiled templates, or
false to disable caching (which is the default).auto_reload: When developing with Twig, it's useful to recompile the
template whenever the source code changes. If you don't provide a value for
the auto_reload option, it will be determined automatically based on the
debug value.strict_variables: If set to false, Twig will silently ignore invalid
variables (variables and or attributes/methods that do not exist) and
replace them with a null value. When set to true, Twig throws an
exception instead (default to false).autoescape: If set to true, auto-escaping will be enabled by default
for all templates (default to true). As of Twig 1.8, you can set the
escaping strategy to use (html, js, false to disable).
As of Twig 1.9, you can set the escaping strategy to use (css, url,
html_attr, or a PHP callback that takes the template "filename" and must
return the escaping strategy to use -- the callback cannot be a function name
to avoid collision with built-in escaping strategies).optimizations: A flag that indicates which optimizations to apply
(default to -1 -- all optimizations are enabled; set it to 0 to
disable).Loaders are responsible for loading templates from a resource such as the file system.
All template loaders can cache the compiled templates on the filesystem for
future reuse. It speeds up Twig a lot as templates are only compiled once; and
the performance boost is even larger if you use a PHP accelerator such as APC.
See the cache and auto_reload options of Twig_Environment above
for more information.
Here is a list of the built-in loaders Twig provides:
Twig_Loader_Filesystem¶
New in version 1.10: The prependPath() and support for namespaces were added in Twig 1.10.
Twig_Loader_Filesystem loads templates from the file system. This loader
can find templates in folders on the file system and is the preferred way to
load them:
1 | $loader = new Twig_Loader_Filesystem($templateDir);
|
It can also look for templates in an array of directories:
1 | $loader = new Twig_Loader_Filesystem(array($templateDir1, $templateDir2));
|
With such a configuration, Twig will first look for templates in
$templateDir1 and if they do not exist, it will fallback to look for them
in the $templateDir2.
You can add or prepend paths via the addPath() and prependPath()
methods:
1 2 | $loader->addPath($templateDir3);
$loader->prependPath($templateDir4);
|
The filesystem loader also supports namespaced templates. This allows to group your templates under different namespaces which have their own template paths.
When using the setPaths(), addPath(), and prependPath() methods,
specify the namespace as the second argument (when not specified, these
methods act on the "main" namespace):
1 | $loader->addPath($templateDir, 'admin');
|
Namespaced templates can be accessed via the special
@namespace_name/template_path notation:
1 | $twig->render('@admin/index.html', array());
|
Twig_Loader_String¶Twig_Loader_String loads templates from strings. It's a dummy loader as
the template reference is the template source code:
1 2 3 4 | $loader = new Twig_Loader_String();
$twig = new Twig_Environment($loader);
echo $twig->render('Hello {{ name }}!', array('name' => 'Fabien'));
|
This loader should only be used for unit testing as it has severe limitations:
several tags, like extends or include do not make sense to use as the
reference to the template is the template source code itself.
Twig_Loader_Array¶Twig_Loader_Array loads a template from a PHP array. It's passed an array
of strings bound to template names:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | $loader = new Twig_Loader_Array(array(
'index.html' => 'Hello {{ name }}!',
));
$twig = new Twig_Environment($loader);
echo $twig->render('index.html', array('name' => 'Fabien'));
|
This loader is very useful for unit testing. It can also be used for small projects where storing all templates in a single PHP file might make sense.
Tip
When using the Array or String loaders with a cache mechanism, you
should know that a new cache key is generated each time a template content
"changes" (the cache key being the source code of the template). If you
don't want to see your cache grows out of control, you need to take care
of clearing the old cache file by yourself.
Twig_Loader_Chain¶Twig_Loader_Chain delegates the loading of templates to other loaders:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | $loader1 = new Twig_Loader_Array(array(
'base.html' => '{% block content %}{% endblock %}',
));
$loader2 = new Twig_Loader_Array(array(
'index.html' => '{% extends "base.twig" %}{% block content %}Hello {{ name }}{% endblock %}',
'base.html' => 'Will never be loaded',
));
$loader = new Twig_Loader_Chain(array($loader1, $loader2));
$twig = new Twig_Environment($loader);
|
When looking for a template, Twig will try each loader in turn and it will
return as soon as the template is found. When rendering the index.html
template from the above example, Twig will load it with $loader2 but the
base.html template will be loaded from $loader1.
Twig_Loader_Chain accepts any loader that implements
Twig_LoaderInterface.
Note
You can also add loaders via the addLoader() method.
All loaders implement the Twig_LoaderInterface:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 | interface Twig_LoaderInterface
{
/**
* Gets the source code of a template, given its name.
*
* @param string $name string The name of the template to load
*
* @return string The template source code
*/
function getSource($name);
/**
* Gets the cache key to use for the cache for a given template name.
*
* @param string $name string The name of the template to load
*
* @return string The cache key
*/
function getCacheKey($name);
/**
* Returns true if the template is still fresh.
*
* @param string $name The template name
* @param timestamp $time The last modification time of the cached template
*/
function isFresh($name, $time);
}
|
As an example, here is how the built-in Twig_Loader_String reads:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 | class Twig_Loader_String implements Twig_LoaderInterface
{
public function getSource($name)
{
return $name;
}
public function getCacheKey($name)
{
return $name;
}
public function isFresh($name, $time)
{
return false;
}
}
|
The isFresh() method must return true if the current cached template
is still fresh, given the last modification time, or false otherwise.
Tip
As of Twig 1.11.0, you can also implement Twig_ExistsLoaderInterface
to make your loader faster when used with the chain loader.
Twig extensions are packages that add new features to Twig. Using an
extension is as simple as using the addExtension() method:
1 | $twig->addExtension(new Twig_Extension_Sandbox());
|
Twig comes bundled with the following extensions:
The core, escaper, and optimizer extensions do not need to be added to the Twig environment, as they are registered by default.
This section describes the features added by the built-in extensions.
Tip
Read the chapter about extending Twig to learn how to create your own extensions.
The core extension defines all the core features of Twig:
The escaper extension adds automatic output escaping to Twig. It defines a
tag, autoescape, and a filter, raw.
When creating the escaper extension, you can switch on or off the global output escaping strategy:
1 2 | $escaper = new Twig_Extension_Escaper(true);
$twig->addExtension($escaper);
|
If set to true, all variables in templates are escaped (using the html
escaping strategy), except those using the raw filter:
1 | {{ article.to_html|raw }}
|
You can also change the escaping mode locally by using the autoescape tag
(see the autoescape doc for the syntax used before
Twig 1.8):
1 2 3 4 5 | {% autoescape 'html' %}
{{ var }}
{{ var|raw }} {# var won't be escaped #}
{{ var|escape }} {# var won't be double-escaped #}
{% endautoescape %}
|
Warning
The autoescape tag has no effect on included files.
The escaping rules are implemented as follows:
Literals (integers, booleans, arrays, ...) used in the template directly as variables or filter arguments are never automatically escaped:
1 2 3 4 | {{ "Twig<br />" }} {# won't be escaped #}
{% set text = "Twig<br />" %}
{{ text }} {# will be escaped #}
|
Expressions which the result is always a literal or a variable marked safe are never automatically escaped:
{{ foo ? "Twig<br />" : "<br />Twig" }} {# won't be escaped #}
{% set text = "Twig<br />" %}
{{ foo ? text : "<br />Twig" }} {# will be escaped #}
{% set text = "Twig<br />" %}
{{ foo ? text|raw : "<br />Twig" }} {# won't be escaped #}
{% set text = "Twig<br />" %}
{{ foo ? text|escape : "<br />Twig" }} {# the result of the expression won't be escaped #}
Escaping is applied before printing, after any other filter is applied:
1 | {{ var|upper }} {# is equivalent to {{ var|upper|escape }} #}
|
The raw filter should only be used at the end of the filter chain:
1 2 3 | {{ var|raw|upper }} {# will be escaped #}
{{ var|upper|raw }} {# won't be escaped #}
|
Automatic escaping is not applied if the last filter in the chain is marked
safe for the current context (e.g. html or js). escaper and
escaper('html') are marked safe for html, escaper('js') is marked
safe for javascript, raw is marked safe for everything.
1 2 3 4 5 | {% autoescape 'js' %}
{{ var|escape('html') }} {# will be escaped for html and javascript #}
{{ var }} {# will be escaped for javascript #}
{{ var|escape('js') }} {# won't be double-escaped #}
{% endautoescape %}
|
Note
Note that autoescaping has some limitations as escaping is applied on
expressions after evaluation. For instance, when working with
concatenation, {{ foo|raw ~ bar }} won't give the expected result as
escaping is applied on the result of the concatenation, not on the
individual variables (so, the raw filter won't have any effect here).
The sandbox extension can be used to evaluate untrusted code. Access to
unsafe attributes and methods is prohibited. The sandbox security is managed
by a policy instance. By default, Twig comes with one policy class:
Twig_Sandbox_SecurityPolicy. This class allows you to white-list some
tags, filters, properties, and methods:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | $tags = array('if');
$filters = array('upper');
$methods = array(
'Article' => array('getTitle', 'getBody'),
);
$properties = array(
'Article' => array('title', 'body'),
);
$functions = array('range');
$policy = new Twig_Sandbox_SecurityPolicy($tags, $filters, $methods, $properties, $functions);
|
With the previous configuration, the security policy will only allow usage of
the if tag, and the upper filter. Moreover, the templates will only be
able to call the getTitle() and getBody() methods on Article
objects, and the title and body public properties. Everything else
won't be allowed and will generate a Twig_Sandbox_SecurityError exception.
The policy object is the first argument of the sandbox constructor:
1 2 | $sandbox = new Twig_Extension_Sandbox($policy);
$twig->addExtension($sandbox);
|
By default, the sandbox mode is disabled and should be enabled when including
untrusted template code by using the sandbox tag:
1 2 3 | {% sandbox %}
{% include 'user.html' %}
{% endsandbox %}
|
You can sandbox all templates by passing true as the second argument of
the extension constructor:
1 | $sandbox = new Twig_Extension_Sandbox($policy, true);
|
The optimizer extension optimizes the node tree before compilation:
1 | $twig->addExtension(new Twig_Extension_Optimizer());
|
By default, all optimizations are turned on. You can select the ones you want to enable by passing them to the constructor:
1 2 3 | $optimizer = new Twig_Extension_Optimizer(Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_FOR);
$twig->addExtension($optimizer);
|
Twig supports the following optimizations:
Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_ALL, enables all optimizations(this is the default value).
* Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_NONE, disables all optimizations.
This reduces the compilation time, but it can increase the execution time
and the consumed memory.
* Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_FOR, optimizes the for tag by
removing the loop variable creation whenever possible.
* Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_RAW_FILTER, removes the raw
filter whenever possible.
* Twig_NodeVisitor_Optimizer::OPTIMIZE_VAR_ACCESS, simplifies the creation
and access of variables in the compiled templates whenever possible.
Twig can throw exceptions:
Twig_Error: The base exception for all errors.Twig_Error_Syntax: Thrown to tell the user that there is a problem with
the template syntax.Twig_Error_Runtime: Thrown when an error occurs at runtime (when a filter
does not exist for instance).Twig_Error_Loader: Thrown when an error occurs during template loading.Twig_Sandbox_SecurityError: Thrown when an unallowed tag, filter, or
method is called in a sandboxed template.