Symfony provides a session object and several utilities that you can use to store information about the user between requests.
Sessions are provided by the HttpFoundation component, which is included in all Symfony applications, no matter how you installed it. Before using the sessions, check their default configuration:
.. configuration-block::
.. code-block:: yaml
# config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
# Enables session support. Note that the session will ONLY be started if you read or write from it.
# Remove or comment this section to explicitly disable session support.
session:
# ID of the service used for session storage
# NULL means that Symfony uses PHP default session mechanism
handler_id: null
# improves the security of the cookies used for sessions
cookie_secure: auto
cookie_samesite: lax
storage_factory_id: session.storage.factory.native
.. code-block:: xml
<!-- config/packages/framework.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:framework="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony https://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony/symfony-1.0.xsd">
<framework:config>
<!--
Enables session support. Note that the session will ONLY be started if you read or write from it.
Remove or comment this section to explicitly disable session support.
handler-id: ID of the service used for session storage
NULL means that Symfony uses PHP default session mechanism
cookie-secure and cookie-samesite: improves the security of the cookies used for sessions
-->
<framework:session handler-id="null"
cookie-secure="auto"
cookie-samesite="lax"
storage_factory_id="session.storage.factory.native"/>
</framework:config>
</container>
.. code-block:: php
// config/packages/framework.php
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Cookie;
use Symfony\Config\FrameworkConfig;
return static function (FrameworkConfig $framework) {
$framework->session()
// Enables session support. Note that the session will ONLY be started if you read or write from it.
// Remove or comment this section to explicitly disable session support.
->enabled(true)
// ID of the service used for session storage
// NULL means that Symfony uses PHP default session mechanism
->handlerId(null)
// improves the security of the cookies used for sessions
->cookieSecure('auto')
->cookieSamesite(Cookie::SAMESITE_LAX)
->storageFactoryId('session.storage.factory.native')
;
};
Setting the handler_id config option to null means that Symfony will
use the native PHP session mechanism. The session metadata files will be stored
outside of the Symfony application, in a directory controlled by PHP. Although
this usually simplifies things, some session expiration related options may not
work as expected if other applications that write to the same directory have
short max lifetime settings.
If you prefer, you can use the session.handler.native_file service as
handler_id to let Symfony manage the sessions itself. Another useful option
is save_path, which defines the directory where Symfony will store the
session metadata files:
.. configuration-block::
.. code-block:: yaml
# config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
session:
# ...
handler_id: 'session.handler.native_file'
save_path: '%kernel.project_dir%/var/sessions/%kernel.environment%'
.. code-block:: xml
<!-- config/packages/framework.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:framework="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
http://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony https://symfony.com/schema/dic/symfony/symfony-1.0.xsd">
<framework:config>
<framework:session enabled="true"
handler-id="session.handler.native_file"
save-path="%kernel.project_dir%/var/sessions/%kernel.environment%"/>
</framework:config>
</container>
.. code-block:: php
// config/packages/framework.php
use Symfony\Config\FrameworkConfig;
return static function (FrameworkConfig $framework) {
$framework->session()
// ...
->handlerId('session.handler.native_file')
->savePath('%kernel.project_dir%/var/sessions/%kernel.environment%')
;
};
Check out the Symfony config reference to learn more about the other available :ref:`Session configuration options <config-framework-session>`. You can also :doc:`store sessions in a database </session/database>`.
The session is available through the Request object and the RequestStack
service. Symfony injects the request_stack service in services and controllers
if you type-hint an argument with :class:`Symfony\\Component\\HttpFoundation\\RequestStack`:
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
class SomeService
{
private $requestStack;
public function __construct(RequestStack $requestStack)
{
$this->requestStack = $requestStack;
// Accessing the session in the constructor is *NOT* recommended, since
// it might not be accessible yet or lead to unwanted side-effects
// $this->session = $requestStack->getSession();
}
public function someMethod()
{
$session = $this->requestStack->getSession();
// stores an attribute in the session for later reuse
$session->set('attribute-name', 'attribute-value');
// gets an attribute by name
$foo = $session->get('foo');
// the second argument is the value returned when the attribute doesn't exist
$filters = $session->get('filters', []);
// ...
}
}
Stored attributes remain in the session for the remainder of that user's session. By default, session attributes are key-value pairs managed with the :class:`Symfony\\Component\\HttpFoundation\\Session\\Attribute\\AttributeBag` class.
Sessions are automatically started whenever you read, write or even check for the existence of data in the session. This may hurt your application performance because all users will receive a session cookie. In order to prevent that, you must completely avoid accessing the session.
.. toctree::
:maxdepth: 1
session/database
session/locale_sticky_session
session/php_bridge
session/proxy_examples
session/configuring_ttl