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Trying to get up to speed with Symfony, going thru the tutorial, and on this page (symfony.com/doc/current/forms.html) is the following sample:

$form = $this->createFormBuilder($task) ->add('task', TextType::class) ->add('dueDate', DateType::class) ->add('save', SubmitType::class, array('label' => 'Create Post')) ->getForm(); return $this->render('default/new.html.twig', array( 'form' => $form->createView(), ));

Having never seen this syntax before, I quickly ruled out call-chaining which it superficially appears to be, then found that interpreting each of the "bare" arrows as pointing to methods of $form was mostly correct. It ended up working correctly in this version:

$formBuilder = $this->createFormBuilder($task); $formBuilder->add('task', TextType::class); $formBuilder->add('dueDate', DateType::class); $formBuilder->add('save', SubmitType::class, array('label' => 'Create Post')); $form = $formBuilder->getForm(); return $this->render('default/new.html.twig', array( 'form' => $form->createView(), ));

So I'm trying to understand the original sample. If the correct interpretation of the seemingly disconnected arrows is "call method of the object named on the first line", this explains all except the line "->getForm();". If the same rule is applied to that line, however, that line becomes "$formBuilder->getForm();", which of course fails on the render() line because of the lack of assignment to $form (I mean, it still would have failed even if I'd kept the name $form for the builder).

So is there a mistake in the tutorial, or what subtleties of syntax am I missing?

I've searched extensively with combinations of ("php", "arrow", "syntax", ...) but haven't found anything about omitting the object name in a series of method calls.

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2 Answers 2

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The original sample is indeed method chaining.

If you see this example: 

$form = $this->createFormBuilder($task) ->add('task', TextType::class) ->add('dueDate', DateType::class) ->add('save', SubmitType::class, array('label' => 'Create Post')) ->getForm();

It simply means that method createFormBuilder, add, getform all belong to the same class $this so they are mostly returning return $this; from each method, for method to be chained into the next. TextType::class and the rest are class constants.

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add and getForm do not belong to $this. createFormBuilder belongs to $this and returns a FormBuilder[Interface], that class has methods add (returning itself for method chaining) and getForm (returning a Form[Interface], so you can no longer chain FormBuilder[Interface] methods after that, but Form[Interface] methods instead).
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This is in fact method chaining. The new lines between separate method calls is only for better code readability.

This:

$formBuilder = $this->createFormBuilder($task); $formBuilder->add('task', TextType::class);

Is equivalent to this:

$formBuilder = $this->createFormBuilder($task) ->add('task', TextType::class);
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Verified that it's chaining by looking up the definition of FormBuilder::add - it returns the modified FormBuilder object. Then the last line in that set is a clever trick because though the return type is different, it's the last line, and then using the same name means that $form is defined after all. I'm still changing it for readability in my code, so readers won't have to look up the method definitions, and the tutorial might be better with a quick explanation (they rely on SO for questions).

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