The ServerGrove blog has posted another in their spotlights on specific Symfony2 components. In this latest post they look at the OptionsResolver component.

In the 13th post of the Symfony2 components series we will be talking about one little but extremely useful component: OptionsResolver. This component helps us to reduce the boilerplate code required to create an options system with default parameters. As stated in the official docs, is array_replace on steroids.

They start with a common situation, wanting to use options from user input, but only if they exist, and otherwise provide a default. This includes the use of the array_replace function but with the OptionsResolver there's an even easier way. A simple example is included showing how to use it to define options (and throw an exception when an undefined one is set). They show how to use a closure to set defaults on a specific option with more complex logic and how to use the validation and normalization handling.