Displaying status messages to your users: advanced usage

The long story

What happens when you call the set_user_message function? The set_user_message function is a shortcut for:

Mouf::getUserMessageService()->setMessage($html, $type, $category);

The "userMessageService" Mouf instance is an instance of the component SessionMessageService.

The SessionMessageService class

This class is in charge of storing and providing the messages to be displayed to the user. Use SessionMessageService->setMessage to register a message. Use SessionMessageService->getMessages to retrieve the list of messages to display. The messages will be retrieved as an array of UserMessage instances. A call to the SessionMessageService->getMessages function removes the messages from the instance, so if you perform 2 calls to this method, the second call will return an empty array.

Writing your own MessageService

The SessionMessageService is storing the messages in the session. This is a great default behaviour because it means that the user will not miss a message in the event a message is registered, but no call is performed to the MessageWidget.

You can however provide your own class instead of the SessionMessageService. To do this, your class must implement the MessageProviderInterface.

Writing your own MessageWidget

The MessageWidget class is responsible for displaying the error messages. The default implementation is capable of detecting duplicates in the error messages (it will display each message only once). You can also develop your own class. All you need to do is implement the HtmlElementInterface interface, so you can use your component in any template.

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