Symfony Form incompatible with AngularJS $resource

Here is how I managed to solve it, but I'm eager for a cleaner solution if it exists.

It turns out the name of the form type can be empty:

class UserType extends AbstractType
{
    // ..

    public function getName()
    {
        return '';
    }
}

That makes this a valid submission:

{
  "email":"[email protected]"
}

A valid POST request to create a resource in a restful way doesn't have an id. By definition you can PUT to an id. If the target exists it is edited, if not it gets created. Concerning your first question, the second form would be more "correct".

Basically you define the form type, so it's completely up to you (there is no "it expects"). An example could be

class UserType extends AbstractType
{
    public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
    {
        $builder
            ->add('email')
        ;
    }

    public function getName()
    {
        return 'user_form';
    }
}

And then in your controller you pass it an empty user entity

public function newAction()
{
    $user = ...;
    $form = $this->createForm(new UserType(), $user);

    // ...
}

See the official book chapter about SF2 forms for more.

As far as I know you can submit just the specific form data rather than the whole array with the form name as a key like..

$form->submit($request->get($form->getName()));
// or $request->request (for POST)
// or $request->get (for GET)
// to be more specific

With this being known you should then just be able to use..

$form->submit($request->all());
// again with ->request or ->get to be more specific

.. to submit all of the request data as the actual form data without the need for the form name as the key.

This does mean that any extra fields, if any, would be submitted to the form too and possibly cause some of those "This form should not contain extra fields."