apache_router.rst

.. index::
   single: Apache Router

How to use the Apache Router

Symfony2, while fast out of the box, also provides various ways to increase that speed with a little bit of tweaking. One of these ways is by letting apache handle routes directly, rather than using Symfony2 for this task.

Change Router Configuration Parameters

To dump Apache routes you must first tweak some configuration parameters to tell Symfony2 to use the ApacheUrlMatcher instead of the default one:

.. configuration-block::

    .. code-block:: yaml

        # app/config/config_prod.yml
        parameters:
            router.options.matcher.cache_class: ~ # disable router cache
            router.options.matcher_class: Symfony\Component\Routing\Matcher\ApacheUrlMatcher

    .. code-block:: xml

        <!-- app/config/config_prod.xml -->
        <parameters>
            <parameter key="router.options.matcher.cache_class">null</parameter> <!-- disable router cache -->
            <parameter key="router.options.matcher_class">
                Symfony\Component\Routing\Matcher\ApacheUrlMatcher
            </parameter>
        </parameters>

    .. code-block:: php

        // app/config/config_prod.php
        $container->setParameter('router.options.matcher.cache_class', null); // disable router cache
        $container->setParameter(
            'router.options.matcher_class',
            'Symfony\Component\Routing\Matcher\ApacheUrlMatcher'
        );

Tip

Note that :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Routing\\Matcher\\ApacheUrlMatcher` extends :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Routing\\Matcher\\UrlMatcher` so even if you don't regenerate the url_rewrite rules, everything will work (because at the end of ApacheUrlMatcher::match() a call to parent::match() is done).

Generating mod_rewrite rules

To test that it's working, let's create a very basic route for demo bundle:

.. configuration-block::

    .. code-block:: yaml

        # app/config/routing.yml
        hello:
            path:  /hello/{name}
            defaults: { _controller: AcmeDemoBundle:Demo:hello }

    .. code-block:: xml

        <!-- app/config/routing.xml -->
        <route id="hello" path="/hello/{name}">
            <default key="_controller">AcmeDemoBundle:Demo:hello</default>
        </route>

    .. code-block:: php

        // app/config/routing.php
        $collection->add('hello', new Route('/hello/{name}', array(
            '_controller' => 'AcmeDemoBundle:Demo:hello',
        )));

Now generate url_rewrite rules:

$ php app/console router:dump-apache -e=prod --no-debug

Which should roughly output the following:

# skip "real" requests
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule .* - [QSA,L]

# hello
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/hello/([^/]+?)$
RewriteRule .* app.php [QSA,L,E=_ROUTING__route:hello,E=_ROUTING_name:%1,E=_ROUTING__controller:AcmeDemoBundle\:Demo\:hello]

You can now rewrite web/.htaccess to use the new rules, so with this example it should look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # skip "real" requests
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
    RewriteRule .* - [QSA,L]

    # hello
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/hello/([^/]+?)$
    RewriteRule .* app.php [QSA,L,E=_ROUTING__route:hello,E=_ROUTING_name:%1,E=_ROUTING__controller:AcmeDemoBundle\:Demo\:hello]
</IfModule>

Note

Procedure above should be done each time you add/change a route if you want to take full advantage of this setup

That's it! You're now all set to use Apache Route rules.

Additional tweaks

To save a little bit of processing time, change occurrences of Request to ApacheRequest in web/app.php:

// web/app.php

require_once __DIR__.'/../app/bootstrap.php.cache';
require_once __DIR__.'/../app/AppKernel.php';
// require_once __DIR__.'/../app/AppCache.php';

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\ApacheRequest;

$kernel = new AppKernel('prod', false);
$kernel->loadClassCache();
// $kernel = new AppCache($kernel);
$kernel->handle(ApacheRequest::createFromGlobals())->send();