**Course Title:** Mastering Symfony: Building Enterprise-Level PHP Applications **Section Title:** Routing, Controllers, and Templating **Topic:** Build a basic web page using routes, controllers, and Twig templates to display dynamic content.(Lab topic) **Objective:** By the end of this lab, you should be able to build a basic web page using Symfony's routing system, controllers, and Twig templates to display dynamic content. **Materials Needed:** * Symfony 6.x ( https://symfony.com/download ) * PHP 8.x ( https://www.php.net/downloads ) * Composer ( https://getcomposer.org/download/ ) * A code editor or IDE of your choice **Lab Overview:** In this lab, we will create a basic web page that displays a list of books and their authors. We will use Symfony's routing system to define a route for the page, a controller to handle the request, and Twig templates to render the dynamic content. **Step 1: Create a new route** Open the `config/routes.yaml` file and add the following code: ```yml book_list: path: /books controller: App\Controller\BookController::listAction ``` This defines a new route named `book_list` that maps to the `/books` URL and is handled by the `listAction` method of the `BookController` controller. **Step 2: Create the BookController** Create a new file named `BookController.php` in the `src/Controller` directory and add the following code: ```php namespace App\Controller; use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response; use Symfony\Component\Routing\Annotation\Route; class BookController extends Controller { /** * @Route("/books", name="book_list") */ public function listAction() { $books = [ new Book('Harry Potter', 'J.K. Rowling'), new Book('The Lord of the Rings', 'J.R.R. Tolkien'), new Book('The Hunger Games', 'Suzanne Collins'), ]; return $this->render('book/list.html.twig', [ 'books' => $books, ]); } } class Book { private $title; private $author; public function __construct($title, $author) { $this->title = $title; $this->author = $author; } public function getTitle() { return $this->title; } public function getAuthor() { return $this->author; } } ``` This defines a new controller class `BookController` that extends the `Controller` class provided by Symfony. The `listAction` method is annotated with the `@Route` annotation to define the route for this action. The method creates an array of `Book` objects and passes it to the `render` method to render the `book/list.html.twig` template. **Step 3: Create the Twig template** Create a new file named `list.html.twig` in the `templates/book` directory and add the following code: ```twig {% extends 'base.html.twig' %} {% block body %} <h1>Book List</h1> <ul> {% for book in books %} <li> {{ book.title }} by {{ book.author }} </li> {% endfor %} </ul> {% endblock %} ``` This defines a new Twig template that extends the `base.html.twig` template and defines a block named `body`. The template loops over the `books` array and displays the title and author of each book. **Step 4: Test the page** Start the Symfony development server by running the following command: ``` symfony server:start ``` Open a web browser and navigate to `http://localhost:8000/books`. You should see a list of books with their authors. **Key Concepts:** * Routing: We defined a new route named `book_list` that maps to the `/books` URL and is handled by the `listAction` method of the `BookController` controller. * Controllers: We created a new controller class `BookController` that extends the `Controller` class provided by Symfony. The `listAction` method is annotated with the `@Route` annotation to define the route for this action. * Twig templates: We created a new Twig template named `list.html.twig` that extends the `base.html.twig` template and defines a block named `body`. The template loops over the `books` array and displays the title and author of each book. **Practical Takeaways:** * We learned how to define a new route and create a controller to handle the request. * We learned how to use Twig templates to render dynamic content. * We learned how to pass data from the controller to the Twig template. **Next Steps:** In the next topic, we will introduce Doctrine ORM and its role in Symfony. We will learn how to define entities, create a database schema, and perform CRUD operations using Doctrine. **What's Next?** Please proceed to the next topic: 'Introduction to Doctrine ORM and its role in Symfony' (Doctrine ORM and Database Integration). **Help and Feedback** If you have any questions or need help, please leave a comment below.