How to remove the meta name=title element from Symfony pages

Note: If you are using Symfony 1.2, follow these instructions instead.

I came across a slight problem with how the Symfony framework outputs title tag data: it outputs it both to the title element as well as to the meta element with name=”title”. This duplicated data is not optimal and may be considered “spammy”.

In looking to remove one of these, there wasnt an obvious solution, but I finally found this blog post with a solution except there were a few minor drawbacks (especially that it removes the title setting completely and so the title is unavailable after a call to include_metas) to that particular solution so I tweaked it as follows to answer those concerns.

1. In your app’s lib dir, create a file named myWebResponse.class.php:

class myWebResponse extends sfWebResponse
{
   /**
   * Retrieves title for the current web response.
   *
   * @return string Title
   */
   public function getTitle()
   {
      return $this->getParameter('title', '', 'helper/asset/auto/title');
   }

   /**
   * Sets title for the current web response.
   *
   * @param string Title name
   * @param boolean true, for escaping the title
   * @param boolean true, for allowing to overwrite the title
   */
   public function setTitle($title, $escape = true, $replace = true)
   {
      $old_title = $this->getTitle();

      if($replace || empty($old_title))
      {
         // FIXME: If you use the i18n layer and escape the data here, it won't work
         // see include_metas() in AssetHelper
         if($escape)
         {
            $title = htmlentities($title, ENT_QUOTES, sfConfig::get('sf_charset'));
         }

         $this->setParameter('title', $title, 'helper/asset/auto/title');
      }
   }
}

2. In your app’s lib dir, create a file named myViewConfigHandler.class.php:

class myViewConfigHandler extends sfViewConfigHandler
{
   /**
   * Adds http metas and metas statements to the data.
   *
   * @param string The view name
   *
   * @return string The PHP statement
   */
   protected function addHtmlHead($viewName = '')
   {
      $retVal = parent::addHtmlHead($viewName);

      $title = $this->getConfigValue('title', $viewName);

      if(!empty($title)) $retVal  .= "\n" . sprintf("  \$response->setTitle('%s', true, false);", str_replace('\'', '\\\'', preg_replace('/&(?=\w+;)/', '&', htmlspecialchars($title, ENT_QUOTES, sfConfig::get('sf_charset'))))) . "\n";

      return $retVal;
   }
}

3. In your app’s config dir, create a file named config_handlers.yml:

modules/*/config/view.yml:
  class:    myViewConfigHandler

4. Modify the app’s factories.yml to use this response class instead of sfWebResponse

5. Clear the app’s Symfony cache

Note that this method doesn’t work with static titles set in view.yml—it is intended for use with dynamic titles set in actions.

Note that you can still set the title in view.yml, additionally, this method allows you to set the meta title separately from the title element. For example:

default:
  http_metas:
    content-type: text/html

  metas:
    robots:       index, follow
    description:
    keywords:
    language:     en
    title:           This title will show up in the meta element with name=title

  title:          This title will show up in the title element