Symfony Bootstrap 4 Form Theme

This repository has been archived, form theme and scripts are now available at: https://github.com/massimo-cassandro/twig-utilities and https://github.com/massimo-cassandro/form-utilities

A Bootstrap 4 Form Theme for Symfony 3, 4 and 5.

v.2 - Oct 2020

For a complete lookup to all widgets and parameter take a look at https://massimo-cassandro.github.io/symfony-bootstrap-form-theme: it is a static page generated by the html produced by the test app and can be viewed without installing Symfony or anything else.

Quick install

If you don’t need the whole test application, you can only download the files located in the dist folder, that contains the js and scss files and bs4_form_layout.html.twig.

You can also install them in your project using npm:

npm i --save --only=prod @massimo-cassandro/symfony-bootstrap-form-theme

Using the form theme

Add the /dist/scss/_forms.scss file to your scss (after Bootstrap css). Change default options if necessary.

In the demo page, _forms.scss is bundled within the public/assets/sf-bs4-form-test.scss file.

If you want to use the multiselect widget, add the _forms-multiselect.js and _forms-multiselect.scss files (both located in the dist folder) to your js and scss.

In the demo page, both files are bundled within the main js and scss files.

Copy the dist/bs4_form_layout.html.twig file in your template folder
Modify your configuration file as explained below:

Symfony 5 /config/packages/twig.yaml

twig:
    form_themes:
      - 'path/to/bs4_form_layout.html.twig'

Symfony 3 config.yml

# Twig Configuration
twig:
    paths:
      - "path/to/bs4_form_layout.html.twig"

Using the Symfony test application

You can clone the test app repository and run the form test app:

clone the repo and run composer to install Symfony.
run npm in the public/assets directory allowing dev dependencies (omit the --only=prod flag):

npm i --save @massimo-cassandro/symfony-bootstrap-form-theme

The main twig file is: templates/index.html.twig
The controller is: src/Controller/DefaultController.php
The form theme used for testing is: templates/bs4_form_layout_WORK_COPY.html.twig
js and scss source files are located in /src folder

The test page gives you detailed informations about all form widgets:

You can easily modify the template, the js or the css and immediately test the result.

Run sh build.sh to update the dist and docs folders, if you need.
build.sh creates a static html file from the Symfony page. You may need the change the url of your local domain in gulpfile.js.

Codekit

I’ve used Codekit to build js and scss in the test app (the assets/config.codekit3 file contains the project configuration), anyway to can easily switch to another tool.

Symfony Widgets Reference

General

The help parameter allows you to add custom help text. It adds a div.form-help-text element to the rendered markup that contains the help string (HTML can be used). The form-help-text class is defined in _forms.scss.

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "help": "Help text"
}) }}

<div class="form-group">
  <!-- ... -->
  <div class="form-help-text">
    Help text
  </div>
</div>

The disabled: true parameter adds a disabled class to the group container element (in addition to the disabled attribute of the field); this allows you to stylize the whole field group.

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  disabled: true
}) }}

<div class="form-group disabled">
  <!-- ... -->
</div>

A new params parameter allows you to change some behaviour of the widgets. It is a json-like element whose sub-parameters changed depending on the widget used. You can find the whole list of parameters below. Take also a look at the sample page.

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  params: {
    bs_custom_control: true
  }
}) }}

Parameters

container: generates a .form-group div or fieldset (if the element is a collection) wrapping the form element
container_class: add a custom class to the container element
collection_container: specify if a container element must be added for collecions
before and after: markup for input groups elements (see examples)
raw_label: if true, allows using html for labels (default false)
top_label: single checkboxes only, put the label at the top of the element
bs_custom_control: if true, activates Bootstrap custom controls (default false, see examples)
inline: checkboxes and radio buttons only, if true disposes elements inline (default false)
no_items_mes: collections only, message to be displayed if the Choice array is empty (see examples)
multiselect: collection only, generates a multiselect element
button_class: multiselect only, class for button element (default: btn-multiselect, defined in _forms.scss)
menu_class: multiselect only, class for menu element
columns: collections only, activates a multicolumns layout (see examples)

Checkboxes

Single checkboxes

The default behaviour generate the Bootstrap default stacked markup wrapped into a .form-group container:

<div class="form-group">
  <div class="form-check">
    <input type="checkbox"
      id="custom-id"
      name="form[checkboxField2]"
      class="form-check-input"
      value="1">
    <label for="custom-id">
      Checkbox label
    </label>
  </div>
</div>

You can avoid the .form-group container using the params.container parameter. Note however that any help parameter will be ignored, as it is related to the presence of the container:

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "container": false
  }
}) }}

A single checkbox with label on top, can be obuained thru the top_label option. This option requires the .form-group, therefore the params.container is always forced to true.

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "top_label": true
  }
}) }}

Custom checkbox control can be activated using the params.bs_custom_control parameter:

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "bs_custom_control": true
  }
}) }}

Custom checkbox controls use ::before and ::after pseudo-elements, which makes it impossible to use the ::before pseudo-element used for styling required fields’ labels. For this reason, the required parameter, if associated with a custom-checkbox, generates a <span class="required"> element placed after the label element. Therefore, in this case, the asterisk for required fields is located after the label string and not before:

<div class="custom-control custom-checkbox">
  <input type="checkbox" ... >
  <label...>...</label>
  <span class="required"></span>
</div>

Actually, custom checkbox is incompatible with the params.container and params.top_label options, therefore they will be ignored even if they are setted to true. For the same reason, the help parameter will not take effect with custom checkbox, as it is related to the .form-group container.

Multiple checkboxes

Multiple checkboxes are element rendered by the ChoyceType type (https://symfony.com/doc/current/reference/forms/types/choice.html) with ‘expanded’ => true, ‘multiple’ => true options.

The multiple columns option requires a scss file included in my m-utilities package.

After downloaded the package, you need to add the respoinsive columns file to your scss:

@import 'path/to/node_modules/m-utilities/sass_utilities/bs4_responsive_columns';

See the _forms.scss file and test result page for info and examples.

Take a look to the test result page for detailed info.

Radios

Radio buttons options are the same of checkboxes.

Multiselect

Multiple checkboxes and radio button can be displydes as a dropdown using the multiselect option.

This option is inspired by the Bootstrap Multiselect plugin, and offers a way to arrange in a more compact way multiple elements.

For usability reasons, it should not be used with a large number of items.

To activate this option set params.multiselect to true for default settings, or set placeholder and specific classes for menu and buttons as described in Bootstrap docs:

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "multiselect": true
  }
}) }}
{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "multiselect": {
        placeholder: 'Select an option'
        button_class: '...',
        menu_class: '...'
    }
  }
}) }}

This option needs some Bootstrap JS components, Popper.JS and jQuery.

In addition, the _forms.js script is needed.

Select elements

Select elements have custom-select class (https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/components/forms/#select-menu) by default, this behaviour can be changed using the params element of form_row

Input groups

This option allows to add text, buttons, or button groups on either side of textual inputs, selects, or file inputs.

Add a before and/or an after parameter to the params option to generate an input group.

Look at the test page for detailed info and examples

{{ form_row(form.xxxx, {
  "params": {
    "before": [
      {
        "type": "text",
        "content": "$"
      }
    ],
    "after": [
      {
        "type": "text",
        "content": ".00"
      }
    ]
  }
}) }}

TODO

readonly checkboxes
check bootstrap validation markup
errors
custom validity
Grouped stacked checkboxes
progress?
buttons?
date interval?
css for sizing classes
range: current value label, step labels
Option for adding custom classes to fieldset or div containers
Option to have help text printed at bottom of radio buttons or multiple checkboxes