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Symfony2 – Franz Jordán 2011
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Final Thoughts
The templating engine in Symfony is a powerful tool that can be used each time you need to
generate presentational content in HTML, XML or any other format. And though templates are a
common way to generate content in a controller, their use is not mandatory.
The Response object returned by a controller can be created with our without the use of a
template:
// creates a Response object whose content is the rendered template
$response = $this->render('AcmeArticleBundle:Article:index.html.twig');
// creates a Response object whose content is simple text
$response = new Response('response content');
Symfony's templating engine is very flexible and two different template renderers are available
by default: the traditional PHP templates and the sleek and powerful Twig templates. Both
support a template hierarchy and come packaged with a rich set of helper functions capable of
performing the most common tasks.
Overall, the topic of templating should be thought of as a powerful tool that's at your disposal.
In some cases, you may not need to render a template, and in Symfony2, that's absolutely fine.
Learn more from the Cookbook
How to use PHP instead of Twig for Templates
How to customize Error Pages
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