New in EasyAdmin: Automatic Entity Injection in Custom Actions

EasyAdmin 5.1 is out with a small new feature that delivers a big quality-of-life improvement: your custom actions can now receive the current entity (e.g. Order $order) as a typed argument, automatically injected by Symfony with zero configuration.

The {entityId} Placeholder

Every EasyAdmin route that operates on a single entity (edit, detail, delete, or your own custom actions) identifies that entity through a route placeholder. Until now, that placeholder was always called {entityId}:

#[AdminRoute('/{entityId}/invoice')]
public function renderInvoice(): Response
{
    // ...
}

It works, but entityId is an EasyAdmin-specific name, and Symfony has no way of knowing that it represents your entity's identifier.

Custom Actions: Before and After

Imagine you have an OrderCrudController with a custom action that renders an invoice:

use App\Entity\Order;
use EasyCorp\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Attribute\AdminRoute;
use EasyCorp\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Config\Action;
use EasyCorp\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Config\Actions;
use EasyCorp\Bundle\EasyAdminBundle\Controller\AbstractCrudController;

class OrderCrudController extends AbstractCrudController
{
    public function configureActions(Actions $actions): Actions
    {
        $viewInvoice = Action::new('viewInvoice', 'Invoice', 'fa fa-file-invoice')
            ->linkToCrudAction('renderInvoice');

        return $actions->add(Crud::PAGE_DETAIL, $viewInvoice);
    }

    // ...
}

The interesting part is the action method. In most cases, you'll want access to the actual Order object. Before, when using {entityId}, you had two options, and neither was particularly elegant.

Option 1: Explicitly define a mapped route parameter so Symfony knows how to resolve the entity:

#[AdminRoute('/{entityId:order.id}/invoice')]
public function renderInvoice(Order $order): Response
{
    // ...
}

Option 2: Receive the raw identifier and retrieve the entity yourself from the admin context:

#[AdminRoute('/{entityId}/invoice')]
public function renderInvoice(AdminContext $context): Response
{
    $order = $context->getEntity()->getInstance();
    // ...
}

The New {id} Placeholder

EasyAdmin 5.1 lets you use {id} as an alias for {entityId}. This may look like a small change, but it unlocks automatic entity injection and makes route definitions feel more natural. Your custom action can now look like this:

#[AdminRoute('/{id}/invoice')]
public function renderInvoice(Order $order): Response
{
    // that's it, $order is the fully loaded entity
}

That's the entire trick. Because the placeholder is named {id} (matching the identifier property used by most entities), Symfony's EntityValueResolver can automatically inject the corresponding Order. No mapping syntax and no manual lookup. Your custom action becomes a regular Symfony controller method.

Note: Automatic entity injection relies on DoctrineBundle's controller_resolver.auto_mapping option. If your application doesn't enable it, add a #[MapEntity] attribute to the argument (#[MapEntity] Order $order).

Building Admin URLs: setId()

The same idea applies when building admin URLs programmatically. EasyAdmin's AdminUrlGenerator (available in Twig as ea_url()) has always provided a setEntityId() method:

{% set url = ea_url()
    .setController('...')
    .setAction('detail')
    .setEntityId(product.id) %}

EasyAdmin 5.1 introduces a shorter and more natural alias: setId():

{% set url = ea_url()
    .setController('...')
    .setAction('detail')
    .setId(product.id) %}

<a href="{{ url }}">{{ product.name }}</a>

You can use both methods indistinctevily. Also, setId() works regardless of whether the target route uses {id} or {entityId}. Internally, it stores the canonical entity identifier, and EasyAdmin translates it into the appropriate route parameter when generating the URL.

The New Placeholder Also Works in CRUD Route Paths

{id} is accepted anywhere EasyAdmin expects the entity placeholder, including when customizing the route paths of the built-in edit, detail, and delete actions:

// '/{id}' is equivalent to '/{entityId}', but plays nicer with Symfony
'detail' => ['routePath' => '/{id}']

Summary

{id} is a drop-in alias for {entityId}, so both placeholders continue to work and nothing breaks. There's no need to update existing code. However, switching to {id} gives you cleaner route definitions and automatic entity injection in custom actions, making them feel like regular Symfony controllers. Combined with the new setId() method, it also makes URL generation a little cleaner and more expressive throughout your admin code.

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