Symfony: Is there any way to render a twig template using a relative path to the template?

Question

In the Template Naming and Locations section in the Symfony docs it says:

Symfony2 uses a bundle:controller:template string syntax for templates. This allows for several different types of templates, each which lives in a specific location:

• AcmeBlogBundle:Blog:index.html.twig: This syntax is used to specify a template for a specific page. The three parts of the string, each separated by a colon (:), mean the following:
• AcmeBlogBundle: (bundle) the template lives inside the AcmeBlogBundle (e.g. src/Acme/BlogBundle); Blog: (controller) indicates that the template lives inside the Blog subdirectory of Resources/views;
• index.html.twig: (template) the actual name of the file is index.html.twig.

I want to parse a twig template and persist the html into the property of a doctrine entity during my data fixtures bootstrapping process like so:

// let's say it finds ./Data/Product/camera_description.html.twig
$productDescriptionTemplate = __DIR__.sprintf(
    '/Data/Product/%s_description.html.twig', 
    $product->getName()
);

$product->setDescription(
    $this->container->get('templating')->render(
        $productDescriptionTemplate, 
        array()
    )
);

$em->flush();

Which throws the following exception:

# would actually be an absolute path
[InvalidArgumentException]
  Template name "./Data/Product/camera_description.html.twig 
  " is not valid (format is "bundle:section:template.format.engine").

Yes I could move the product description templates to path/to/bundle/Resources/views/ but I am more interested in whether it is possible to circumvent this convention: Is there a way to give the twig templating engine the relative or absolute path to a twig template and have it render it not having to use the convention bundle:controller:template?

Answer 1

You can also create a new namespace as described here : http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/templating/namespaced_paths.html

for example :

paths:
        "%kernel.root_dir%/../Data/Product/": product

which should allow you to write :

'product::%s_description.html.twig', 

or

'@product/%s_description.html.twig'

Answer 2

If you don't want use bundle:controller:template syntax, then you could try using twig directly:

$product->setDescription(
    $this->container->get('twig')->render(
        $productDescriptionTemplate, 
        array()
    )
);