Symfony 2.0.3 Global template variable - symfony

Question

I've got an Entity that I want to associate with the users session.
I created a service so that I could reach this info from where ever.
in the service i save the entities id in an session variable
and in the getEntity() method i get the session variable and with doctrine find the entity and return it.
this way to the template i should be able to call {{ myservice.myentity.myproperty }}
The problem is that myservice is used all over the place, and I don't want to have to get it in every since Action and append it to the view array.
Is there a way to make a service accessible from all views like the session {{ app.session }} ?

Answer 1

The solution
By creating a custom service i can get to that from where ever by using
$this->get('myservice');
this is all done by http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/service_container.html
But I'll give you some demo code.
The Service
This first snippet is the actual service
<?php
namespace MyBundle\AppBundle\Extensions;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Session;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager;
use MyBundle\AppBundle\Entity\Patient;
class AppState
{
protected $session;
protected $em;
function __construct(Session $session, EntityManager $em)
{
$this->session = $session;
$this->em = $em;
}
public function getPatient()
{
$id = $this->session->get('patient');
return isset($id) ? $em->getRepository('MyBundleStoreBundle:Patient')->find($id) : null;
}
}
Register it in you config.yml with something like this
services:
appstate:
class: MyBundle\AppBundle\Extensions\AppState
arguments: [#session, #doctrine.orm.entity_manager]
Now we can as I said before, get the service in our controllers with
$this->get('myservice');
But since this is a global service I didn't want to have to do this in every controller and every action
public function myAction()
{
$appstate = $this->get('appstate');
return array(
'appstate' => $appstate
);
}
so now we go create a Twig_Extension
Twig Extension
<?php
namespace MyBundle\AppBundle\Extensions;
use MyBundle\AppBundle\Extensions\AppState;
class AppStateExtension extends \Twig_Extension
{
protected $appState;
function __construct(AppState $appState) {
$this->appState = $appState;
}
public function getGlobals() {
return array(
'appstate' => $this->appState
);
}
public function getName()
{
return 'appstate';
}
}
By using dependency injection we now have the AppState Service that we created in the twig extension named appstate
Now we register that with the symfony (again inside the services section inside the config-file)
twig.extension.appstate:
class: MyBundle\AppBundle\Extensions\AppStateExtension
arguments: [#appstate]
tags:
- { name: twig.extension }
The important part being the "tags", since this is what symfony uses to find all twig extensions
We are now set to use our appstate in our twig templates by the variable name
{{ appstate.patient }}
or
{{ appstate.getPatient() }}
Awesome!

Answer 2

Maybe you can try this in your action ? : $this->container->get('templating')->addGlobal($name, $value)