Appending route configuration to all routes - symfony

Question

I'd like to have multilingual site done with Symfony. So I need to add something like:
# app/config/routing.yml
contact:
path: /{_locale}
defaults: { _locale: "pl" }
requirements:
_locale: pl|en
However I don't want to repeat this on every route I define, so I came up with solution:
# app/config/config.yml
parameters:
locale.available: pl|en
locale.default: pl
<...>
router:
resource: "%kernel.root_dir%/config/routing.php" # note '.php'
<!-- language: lang-php -->
# app/config/routing.php
<?php
use Symfony\Component\Routing\RouteCollection;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Route;
use Symfony\Component\Yaml\Parser;
$configFile = dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'routing.yml';
$yaml = new Parser();
try {
$routes = $yaml->parse(file_get_contents($configFile));
} catch (ParseException $e) {
printf("Unable to parse the YAML string: %s", $e->getMessage());
}
$collection = new RouteCollection();
foreach ($routes as $name => $def) {
$route = new Route($def['path']);
foreach (['defaults', 'requirements', 'options', 'host', 'schemes', 'methods', 'condition'] as $opt) {
$mtd = 'add'. ucfirst($opt);
if(isset($def[$opt])) $route->$mtd($def[$opt]);
}
$collection->add($name, $route);
}
$collection->addRequirements(['_locale' => "%locale.available%"]);
$collection->addDefaults(['_locale'=>"%locale.default%"]);
return $collection;
?>
# app/config/routing_dev.yml
<...>
_main:
resource: routing.php
Still, I'm rather new to Symfony2 (now 3), so I wonder... Is there a better way to accomplish such appending route config to all the routes? Perhaps there are more flexible or more "right" ways of doing such things in Symfony? Or should I hook into some existing mechanism?

Answer 1

You could use a custom route loader that extends the default one. See here for more info:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/routing/custom_route_loader.html
For example if you wanna support yml, xml and annotations you'd need to extend the Symfony\Component\Routing\Loader\YamlFileLoader, Symfony\Component\Routing\Loader\XmlFileLoader and Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Routing\AnnotatedRouteControllerLoader incorporate the logic you have to the load method and you'd need to change the
sensio_framework_extra.routing.loader.annot_class.class,routing.loader.yml.class and routing.loader.xml.class
parameters to point to your new classes.
Defining your own route_loader seems like the less hacky solution