How to get the server path to the web directory in Symfony2 from inside the controller?

There's actually no direct way to get path to webdir in Symfony2 as the framework is completely independent of the webdir.

You can use getRootDir() on instance of kernel class, just as you write. If you consider renaming /web dir in future, you should make it configurable. For example AsseticBundle has such an option in its DI configuration (see here and here).

To access the root directory from outside the controller you can simply inject %kernel.root_dir% as an argument in your services configuration.

service_name:
    class: Namespace\Bundle\etc
    arguments: ['%kernel.root_dir%']

Then you can get the web root in the class constructor:

public function __construct($rootDir)
{
    $this->webRoot = realpath($rootDir . '/../web');
}

You also can get it from any ContainerAware (f.i. Controller) class from the request service:

• If you are using apache as a webserver (I suppose for other webservers the solution would be similar) and are using virtualhosting (your urls look like this - localhost/app.php then you can use:

  $container->get('request')->server->get('DOCUMENT_ROOT');
  // in controller:
  $this->getRequest()->server->get('DOCUMENT_ROOT');
  

• Else (your urls look like this - localhost/path/to/Symfony/web/app.php:

  $container->get('request')->getBasePath();
  // in controller:
  $this->getRequest()->getBasePath();