Show the logged-in user in a Twig template

Symfony hands every template the current user through the app.user global. Guard it, then print the identifier:

{% if is_granted('IS_AUTHENTICATED_FULLY') %}
    Hi {{ app.user.userIdentifier }}!
{% endif %}

That runs on Symfony 6, 7 and 8. is_granted() comes from symfony/security-bundle, so it exists in any application with a firewall.

If you arrived holding the older version of this snippet, the one with is_granted("ROLE") and app.user.username, it has not worked for some years. This page carried it until today. Here is exactly how it fails.

Why the old snippet stopped working

{% if is_granted("ROLE") %}
    Hi {{ app.user.username }}!
{% endif %}

Two faults, and they fail in opposite ways.

ROLE is not a role. It was written as a placeholder meaning "your role goes here", but copied literally it matches nothing. The condition is always false, the block never renders, and nothing complains. No error, no log line, just a greeting that never appears and no clue why.

app.user.username raises an error. UserInterface::getUsername() was replaced by getUserIdentifier() in Symfony 5.3 and left the interface entirely in 6.0. A user class generated by make:user today has getUserIdentifier() and getEmail() and no username of any kind, so Twig cannot resolve the attribute and throws. That one surfaces as a 500, not a blank.

A third thing is not an error but is worth saying. The old version offered this "from the Symfony user or the FOSUserBundle". FOSUserBundle's own README now opens by saying new projects should not use it, and points at Symfony's built-in user provider instead.

Identifier, or a name a person recognizes?

getUserIdentifier() returns whatever your firewall authenticates on. In most applications built since Symfony 5.3 that is an email address, because make:user proposes email and almost everyone accepts it.

Which means the snippet at the top of this page, in a default application, greets people with their own email address and prints it on screen next to whoever is standing behind them. Correct code, wrong output.

If you want a name, put one on the user class and ask for that instead:

public function getDisplayName(): string
{
    return $this->firstName ?: $this->getUserIdentifier();
}

{% if is_granted('IS_AUTHENTICATED_FULLY') %}
    Hi {{ app.user.displayName }}!
{% endif %}

The fallback matters more than it looks. A first name is usually optional, and somebody who never filled one in should get their identifier rather than a greeting with a hole in it.

When nobody is signed in

app.user is null for an anonymous visitor, and reaching for an attribute on null throws. The guard above already prevents that. Without a guard, use the null-coalescing operator, which Twig reads as "if this cannot be resolved, use the other one":

Hi {{ app.user.displayName ?? 'there' }}!

That is the form Symfony's own template documentation uses, and it is safe both on a null user and on a user class that has no such property.