Symfony2 Forms: is it possible to bind a form in an "unconventional way"? - forms

Question

Imagine this scenario: in our company there is an employee that "play" around graphic,css,html and so on.
Our new project will born under symfony2 so we're trying some silly - but "real" - stuff (like authentication from db, submit data from a form and persist it to db and so on..)
The problem
As far i know, learnt from symfony2 "book" that i found on the site (you can find it here), there is an "automated" way for creating and rendering forms:
1) Build the form up into a controller in this way
$form = $this->createFormBuilder($task)
->add('task','text'),
->add('dueDate','date'),
->getForm();
return $this->render('pathToBundle:Controller:templateTwig',
array('form'=>$form->createview());
2) Into templateTwig render the template
{{ form_widget(form) }} // or single rows method
3) Into a controller (the same that have a route where you can submit data), take back submitted information
if($rquest->getMethod()=='POST'){
$form->bindRequest($request);
/* and so on */
}
Return to scenario
Our graphic employee don't want to access controllers, write php and other stuff like those. So he'll write a twig template with a "unconventional" (from symfony2 point of view, but conventional from HTML point of view) method:
/* into twig template */
<form action="{{ path('SestanteUserBundle_homepage') }}" method="post" name="userForm">
<div>
USERNAME: <input type="text" name="user_name" value="{{ user.username}}"/>
</div>
<div>
EMAIL: <input type="text" name="user_mail" value="{{ user.email }}"/>
</div>
<input type="hidden" name="user_id" value="{{ id }}" />
<input type="submit" value="modifica i dati">
</form>
Now, if into the controller that handle the submission of data we do something like that
public function indexAction(Request $request)
{
if($request->getMethod() == 'POST'){ // sono arrivato per via di un submit, quindi devo modificare i dati prima di farli vedere a video
$defaultData = array('message'=>'ho visto questa cosa in esempio, ma non capisco se posso farne a meno');
$form = $this->createFormBuilder($defaultData)
->add('user_name','text')
->add('user_mail','email')
->add('user_id','integer')
->getForm();
$form->bindRequest($request); //bindo la form ad una request
$data = $form->getData(); //mi aspetto un'array chiave=>valore
/* .... */
We expected that $data will contain an array with key,value from the submitted form.
We found that it isn't true. After googling for a while and try with other "bad" ideas, we're frozen into that.
So, if you have a "graphic office" that can't handle directly php code, how can we interface from form(s) to controller(s) ?
UPDATE
It seems that Symfony2 use a different convention for form's field name and lookup once you've submitted that.
In particular, if my form's name is addUser and a field is named userName, the field's name will be AddUser[username] so maybe it have a "dynamic" lookup method that will extract form's name, field's name, concat them and lookup for values.
Is it possible?

Answer 1

You can force Symfony2 to set the name of a form field, though I don't suggest it: $formBuilder->add('dummyfield', 'text', array( 'attr' => array('name' => 'yournamehere') ) );
Alternatively (also a bad idea), you can do this, which won't even let you use the form API: $this->getRequest()->get('whatever_the_field_name_is');
OR you can hackily add elements to the request based on the Sf2 generated names before binding it (copying the values that exist).
OR you can make use of the bind method of the form component (instead of bindRequest) as documented here.
But seriously...just use the formbuilder api. Your life will be easier, and isn't that what a framework is for? :)

Answer 2

Symfony 2 is based on twig as templating language. Let him use it :
{{ form_label(form.field) }}
will generate something like this :
<label for="field">field</label>
You can use all the available functions in order to render the form :
{{ form_label() }}
{{ form_widget() }}
{{ form_errors() }}
If you want to customize what is rendered by those functions, you can override twig templates as defined in the Symfony2 documentation.
Otherwise if you really want to something ugly, you can go for this kind of syntax :
{{ myform.vars.value.myField }}