Setting up Twig in Laravel

Re-posted from my old blog

This week, I have been mostly trying… Laravel.

Trying a new PHP framework raises a few questions. What coding style does it use? How do you build models? What do templates look like?

When trying Laravel for the first time, I wasn’t keen on the Blade templating engine. So I decided to look for how to integrate Twig. One quick Google search later, and I found TwigBridge by Rob Crowe.

Following the instructions was simple enough. However, I think there was one thing missing. What do you name your template files so Twig can find them?

How to name Twig templates in Laravel

In Laravel, a Blade template for the “users” route would be called: users.blade.php

After a bit of experimenting, I found that the equivalent Twig template would be called: users.twig

This works out nicely in PhpStorm, as suddenly the file icon changed from a PHP file to a bit of green grass (maybe it looks better than a twig). And the code completion works. That’s much better than the last project I set up with Twig, which is on Zend Framework v1 and the files are named index.html.

Don’t forget to rename your base template to base.twig or similar. The Blade equivalent I created in the QuickStart guide was called layout.blade.php.

Comparing Blade and Twig templates

So, just for completeness, here’s a sample Blade template:

@extends('layout')

@section('content')
 @foreach($users as $user)
 <p>{{ $user->name }}</p>
 @endforeach
@stop

And here’s a Twig template:

{% extends "base.twig" %}

{% block content %}

{% for User in UserList %}
<p>{{ User.name }}</p>
{% endfor %}

{% endblock content %}

So far, I’m liking Laravel, but I’m much happier with Twig than Blade.