The link

Now that we have a Url object, we can use it to generate a link. We can do this in two ways:

• Use the LinkGenerator service (named link_generator) and call its generate() method passing the link text and the Url object we have obtained. This will return a GeneratedLink object, which contains the actual string representation of the link, that is, the markup.
• Use the Link class, which wraps a render element (we will talk more about render elements in the Theming chapter) to represent the link.

Let's take a look at an example of both, from start to finish.

Consider this example of generating a link using the service:

$url = Url::fromRoute('my_route', ['param_name' => $param_value]);
$link = \Drupal::service('link_generator')->generate('My link', $url);

We can then directly print $link because it implements the __toString() method.

Now, consider this example of generating a link using the Link class:

$url = Url::fromRoute('my_other_route');
$link = Link::fromTextAndUrl('My link', $url);

We now have $link as a Link object whose toRenderable() returns a render array of the #type => 'link'. Behind the scenes, at render time, it will also use the link generator to transform that into a link string.

If we have a Link object, we can also use the link generator ourselves to generate a link based on it:

$link = \Drupal::service('link_generator')->generateFromLink($linkObject);