Symfony2 invalid form without errors

I've got a problem with a Symfony2 generated CRUD form. (With MongoDB Documents, but I do not think that this is related)

In my controller's createAction() method, when I debug the form result :

$form->isValid() // returns false

$form->getErrors() // returns en empty array(0) {}

So, I do not get anything using form_errors(form) on my twig template (which seems normal because of $form->getErrors() empty return)

And the written values are not replaced in the form...

Does anyone has an idea?

The first thing to understand is validation is done on the model, not the form. The form can contain errors, but only if it has a field mapped to the property that doesn't validate. So if your form does not contain the invalid field (maybe a NotNull assertion on a property that is not in the form), it will not show the error.

The second thing is that $form->getErrors() will only show errors for that level, each form child can contain its own errors. So if you want to check the errors, you should loop through the fields and call getErrors on each field. The getErrors method on the Form class can be deceiving that way.

To debug a form, use $form->getErrorsAsString() instead of $form->getErrors().

$form->getErrorsAsString() should only be used to debug the form...it will contain the errors of each child elements which is not the case of $form->getErrors().

As Peter mentions, $form->getErrors() will not return the sum of all the errors of the children forms.

To understand how a form can be invalid and have a getErrors() returning an empty array, you can have a look at the isValid() method of the symfony form class. As you can see, there are 2 cases where the form is not valid, the first one test for the general form, and the second case test for each child elements.

public function isValid()
{
    //...
    
    //CASE I : IF CHILD ELEMENTS HAVE ERRORS, $this->errors WILL CONTAIN
    //THE ERROR ON THE CHILD ELEMENT AND NOT ON THE GENERAL 'errors' FIELD 
    //ITSELF

    if (count($this->errors) > 0) {
        return false;
    }
    
    //CASE II: AND THIS IS WHY WE ARE TESTING THE CHILD ELEMENTS AS WELL
    //TO CHECK WHETHER THERE ARE VALID OR NOT

    if (!$this->isDisabled()) {
        foreach ($this->children as $child) {
            if (!$child->isValid()) {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    return true;
}

Therefore each form child can contain an error, but $form->getErrors() itself won't return all the errors. Considering a form that has many child elements, you will generally have $form->getErrors() with a CSRF error if the CSRF is not correct.

Update for Symfony 2.6

So depending on your Symfony2 version:

[tag:Symfony2.3]

die($form->getErrorsAsString());

As of [tag:Symfony2.5], the getErrorsAsString() function is deprecated (will be removed in Symfony3) and you should use the following method:

die((string) $form->getErrors());     // Main errors
die((string) $form->getErrors(true)); // Main and child errors

As of [tag:Symfony2.6], you can also use the dump (dev environment) function if you have activated the DebugBundle:

dump((string) $form->getErrors());     // Main errors
dump((string) $form->getErrors(true)); // Main and child errors

I’ve just got the same problem. For me, the form was not valid, but I could not get any errors by using $form->getErrors() or $form->getErrorsAsString(). I later found I forgot to pass the CSRF token to the form so it won’t be submitted, and $form->handleRequest($request) did nothing (no validation). As I saw @pit's answer, I tried to use

$form->submit($request);

$form->getErrorsAsString();

it returned an error:

> ERROR: The CSRF token is invalid. Please try to resubmit the form.

Here is some explanation in the documentation of Symfony2: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/forms.html#handling-form-submissions

For Symfony (>= 3.2 - 4), you can use :

foreach($form->getErrors(true, false) as $er) {
    print_r($er->__toString());
}

to see the errors obviously.

From Symfony 3 onwards as per documentation you should do use the new implementation:

$errors = (string) $form->getErrors(true, false);

This will return all errors as one string.

For me the form was not submitted, even if I had a submit button. I added the code to solve the problem

$request = $this->get('request');
if($request->isMethod("POST")){
      $form->submit($request);
        if($form->isValid()){
        // now true
        }
}

Yes it is correct, what it say Peter Kruithof In SF 2.8 this is my function,to get the errors of the fields

 private function getErrorsForm(\Symfony\Component\Form\Form $form)
{
    $response =  array();

    foreach ($form as $child) {
         foreach ($child->getErrors(true) as $error) {
            $response[$child->getName()][] = $error->getMessage();
         }
    }

    return $response;
}

If you are sending datas via AJAX, you may have missed to include the form's name on your datas keys and therefore are "victim" of …

# line 100 of Symfony/Component/Form/Extension/HttpFoundation/HttpFoundationRequestHandler.php 
// Don't submit the form if it is not present in the request

Which means, while trying to handle the request, the request processing mechanism did not find your form's name inside GET/POST datas (meaning as an array).

When you render a form the usual way, each of its fields contain your form's name as a prefix into their name attribute my_form[child_field_name].

When using ajax, add your form's name as a prefix in datas !

data : {
    "my_form" : {
       "field_one" : "field_one_value"
       ...
    }
}

I came across this error and found that I was forgetting to "handle" the request. Make sure you have that around...

public function editAction(Request $request)
{
    $form = $this->createForm(new CustomType(),$dataObject);
    /**  This next line is the one I'm talking about... */
    $form->handleRequest($request);
    if ($request->getMethod() == "POST") {
        if ($form->isValid()) {
        ...

It appears as you have a validation problem. The form is not validating on submitting. I am going to assume you are using Annotations for your validation. Make sure you have this at the top of the entity.

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints as Assert;

and also this above each property

/**      
 * @Assert\NotBlank()      
 */

The NotBlank() can be changed to any constraint to fit your needs.

More information on validation can be found at: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/validation.html

More information on Assert constraints can be found at: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/validation.html#constraints