Theming
Topic

Template Design with Twig for Drupal 8, 9, and 10

Twig is a template engine for PHP, which is the language used in Drupal. Twig can be used for templates in generic PHP applications as well as Drupal themes. The Drupal implementation of Twig is the same as regular Twig with a couple of Drupal additions. Drupal adds some custom filters and automatically handles the render pipeline for you. Anything you can do in regular Twig you can also do in Drupal's implementation of Twig.

Example tasks

  • Customize markup in templates for a Drupal site
  • Use dynamic data from variables within template files
  • Customize markup in PHP applications that use Twig for templates

Confidence

Resources on this page use both generic PHP applications as well as template files from Drupal 8 themes for context and examples. The Twig that is used in generic PHP applications can be used in Drupal templates as well. Note that Drupal has extended Twig and provides some Drupal-specific filters and functions. In some cases, these Drupal-specific functions or filters are preferable to their generic Twig counterparts.

Note: Drupal 10 uses Twig 3.x. (Drupal 9 uses Twig version 2.x and Drupal 8 uses Twig version 1.x. Be sure to use the appropriate version when consulting Twig's official documentation.

Drupalize.Me resources

Drupal 8, 9, and 10
More information

Before you can create a path or link to another page on your site, you'll need to know the route (unless there is already a variable available for the URL you need). Finding a route can be a tricky task unless you have the right tools. In this tutorial, we'll show how tools like Webprofiler, Drush, and Grep can be used to get route information for a page, so that you can use functions that need a route as a function parameter.

In this tutorial we'll:

  • Learn how to determine the route or path of an internal page.
More information

By default, individual forms in Drupal are not output using Twig template files. It's possible to associate a form with a Twig template file by creating a new theme hook, and then referencing that theme hook from the $form array that defines the form. Doing so allows theme developers to customize the layout of the elements in the form using HTML and CSS.

This is useful when you want to change the layout of the entire form. For example, putting the elements into 2 columns. If you want to change individual elements in the form, you can often do so by overriding element specific Twig template files.

In this tutorial, we'll:

  • Learn how to create a new theme hook that can be used to theme an element in a render array.
  • Associate the $form we want to theme with the new theme hook we created.
  • Create a Twig template file for the theme hook that will allow us to lay out the form elements using custom HTML.

By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to associate a Twig template file with any form in Drupal, so that you can customize its layout using HTML and CSS.

Related tutorials

Using Twig's attach_library function, you can attach asset libraries of CSS or JavaScript files. Learn more about asset libraries, or jump straight to the relevant section on attach_library in Attach a Library.

Guides

Not sure where to start? Our guides provide useful learning tracks for all skill levels.

Navigate guides

External resources

  • Twig 3.x Documentation (twig.symfony.com)
    • Official documentation for Twig. Contains a reference for tags, filters, functions, and tests, as well as information for template designers and developers looking to extend Twig with custom functionality.
  • Twig for Template Designers
    • This document describes the syntax and semantics of the template engine and will be most useful as reference to those creating Twig templates.
  • Twig in Drupal (Drupal.org)
    • Guide to community-contributed documentation on Twig as it is used in Drupal.
  • Preparing for use of Twig 2 in Drupal 9 (drupal.org)
    • The update from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 includes updating the Twig dependency from Twig 1 to Twig 2. Unfortunately due to how composer dependencies work for Drupal 8 sites, we cannot update Drupal 8 to optionally allow Twig 2 support, even though the API is fully ready for that. So these changes can only be made currently in your Drupal 9 environment.
    • Use Upgrade Status either on the UI or via Drush to check your Twig files for deprecated syntax use.
  • Twig updated from 2.x to 3.x (Drupal.org)
    • Note especially changes to spaceless syntax and the removal of support for if inside a for clause.
  • Deprecated features in Twig 2.x (twig.symfony.com)
    • This page from Twig's official documentation lists all of the deprecated features in Twig 2.x which were removed in Twig 3.x.