tips-and-tricks.md

Tips and Tricks

Improving Backend Performance

EasyAdmin does an intense use of Doctrine metadata introspection to generate the backend on the fly without generating any file or resource. For complex backends, this process can add a noticeable performance overhead.

Fortunately, Doctrine provides a simple caching mechanism for entity metadata. If your server has APC installed, enable this cache just by adding the following configuration:

# app/config/config_prod.yml
doctrine:
    orm:
        metadata_cache_driver: apc

In addition to apc, Doctrine metadata cache supports memcache, memcached, xcache and service (for using a custom cache service). Read the documentation about Doctrine caching drivers.

Note that the previous example configures metadata caching in config_prod.yml file, which is the configuration used for the production environment. It's not recommended to enable this cache in the development environment to avoid having to clear APC cache or restart the web server whenever you make any change to your Doctrine entities.

This simple metadata cache configuration can improve your backend performance between 20% and 30% depending on the complexity and number of your entities.

Use a Custom Dashboard as the Index Page of the Backend

By default, the index page of the backend is the list view of the first configured entity. If you want to display instead a custom page or dashboard, [override the default AdminController] override-admin-controller and use the following code:

// src/AppBundle/Controller/AdminController.php
namespace AppBundle\Controller;

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\Route;
use JavierEguiluz\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Controller\AdminController as BaseAdminController;

class AdminController extends BaseAdminController
{
    /**
     * Don't forget to add this route annotation!
     *
     * @Route("/", name="easyadmin")
     */
    public function indexAction(Request $request)
    {
        // if the URL doesn't include the entity name, this is the index page
        if (null === $request->query->get('entity')) {
            // define this route in any of your own controllers
            return $this->redirectToRoute('admin_dashboard');
        }

        // don't forget to add this line to serve the regular backend pages
        return parent::indexAction($request);
    }

    // ...
}

Beware that the index() method of the default AdminController defines the easyadmin route, which is used to generate every backend URL. This means that when overriding the index() method in your own controller, you must also add the @Route() annotation. Otherwise, the backend will stop working.

Create a Read-Only Backend

Disable the delete, edit and new actions for all views and the users won't be able to add, modify or remove any information:

easy_admin:
    disabled_actions: ['delete', 'edit', 'new']

Unloading the Default JavaScript and Stylesheets

EasyAdmin uses Bootstrap CSS and jQuery frameworks to build the interface. In case you want to unload these files in addition to loading your own assets, override the default layout.html.twig template and empty the head_stylesheets and body_javascripts Twig blocks.

Read the [Advanced Design Customization] advanced-design-customization tutorial to learn how to override default templates.

Removing Action Labels and Displaying Just Icons

By default, the actions showed in the list view table only display their label (Edit, Show, etc.):

Adding an icon for each action is as easy as defining their icon option:

easy_admin:
    list:
        actions:
            - { name: 'show', icon: 'search' }
            - { name: 'edit', icon: 'pencil' }
    # ...

This configuration makes the entity listing looks as follow:

When displaying entities with lots of information, it may be useful to remove the action label and display just their icons. To do so, define an empty string for the label option or set its value to false:

easy_admin:
    list:
        actions:
            - { name: 'show', icon: 'search', label: '' }
            - { name: 'edit', icon: 'pencil', label: '' }
            # if you prefer, set labels to false
            # - { name: 'show', icon: 'search', label: false }
            # - { name: 'edit', icon: 'pencil', label: false }
    # ...

This configuration makes the entity listing looks as follow:

Making the Backend Use a Different Language Than the Public Website

Imagine that the public part of your website uses French as its default locale. EasyAdmin uses the same locale as the underlying Symfony application, so the backend would be displayed in French too. How could you define a different language for the backend?

You just need to get the translator service and execute the setLocale() method befor executing the code of EasyAdmin. The easiest way to do that is to create a [custom admin controller] override-admin-controller and override the initialize() method as follows:

// src/AppBundle/Controller/AdminController.php
namespace AppBundle\Controller;

use JavierEguiluz\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Controller\AdminController as BaseAdminController;

class AdminController extends BaseAdminController
{
    protected function initialize(Request $request)
    {
        $this->get('translator')->setLocale('en');
        parent::initialize();
    }
}