Symfony: Installation and Configuration of the PHP Framework

Introduction

Symfony is a free MVC framework written in PHP 5. As a framework, it facilitates and accelerates the development of Internet and Intranet websites and applications.

Prerequisites

Before starting, we need a web server of your choice (I'm using Apache2) and a database server (MySQL):

aptitude install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5 mysql-server

Symfony provides a small utility to test your server:

> wget http://sf-to.org/1.4/check.php
> php check_configuration.php 
********************************
*                              *
*  symfony requirements check  *
*                              *
********************************

php.ini used by PHP: /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

** WARNING **
*  The PHP CLI can use a different php.ini file
*  than the one used with your web server.
*  If this is the case, please launch this
*  utility from your web server.
** WARNING **

** Mandatory requirements **

  OK        PHP version is at least 5.2.4 (5.2.6-1+lenny8)

** Optional checks **

  OK        PDO is installed
[[WARNING]] PDO has some drivers installed: : FAILED
            *** Install PDO drivers (mandatory for Propel and Doctrine) ***
  OK        PHP-XML module is installed
[[WARNING]] XSL module is installed: FAILED
            *** Install and enable the XSL module (recommended for Propel) ***
  OK        The token_get_all() function is available
  OK        The mb_strlen() function is available
  OK        The iconv() function is available
  OK        The utf8_decode() is available
  OK        The posix_isatty() is available
[[WARNING]] A PHP accelerator is installed: FAILED
            *** Install a PHP accelerator like APC (highly recommended) ***
[[WARNING]] php.ini has short_open_tag set to off: FAILED
            *** Set it to off in php.ini ***
[[WARNING]] php.ini has magic_quotes_gpc set to off: FAILED
            *** Set it to off in php.ini ***
  OK        php.ini has register_globals set to off
  OK        php.ini has session.auto_start set to off
  OK        PHP version is not 5.2.9

Clearly, there are some small issues. Let's fix them now:

aptitude install php5-mysql php5-xsl php-apc
perl -pe 's/^(short_open_tag = )on/\1off/i' < /etc/php5/cli/php.ini > /tmp/sym_php_changes_tmp
perl -pe 's/^(magic_quotes_gpc = )on/\1off/i' < /tmp/sym_php_changes_tmp > /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Now, if we check again:

> php check_configuration.php 
********************************
*                              *
*  symfony requirements check  *
*                              *
********************************

php.ini used by PHP: /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

** WARNING **
*  The PHP CLI can use a different php.ini file
*  than the one used with your web server.
*  If this is the case, please launch this
*  utility from your web server.
** WARNING **

** Mandatory requirements **

  OK        PHP version is at least 5.2.4 (5.2.6-1+lenny8)

** Optional checks **

  OK        PDO is installed
  OK        PDO has some drivers installed: mysql
  OK        PHP-XML module is installed
  OK        XSL module is installed
  OK        The token_get_all() function is available
  OK        The mb_strlen() function is available
  OK        The iconv() function is available
  OK        The utf8_decode() is available
  OK        The posix_isatty() is available
  OK        A PHP accelerator is installed
  OK        php.ini has short_open_tag set to off
  OK        php.ini has magic_quotes_gpc set to off
  OK        php.ini has register_globals set to off
  OK        php.ini has session.auto_start set to off
  OK        PHP version is not 5.2.9

Everything is ok :-)

Installation

There are several solutions to install Symfony. I personally chose SVN, but PEAR would have been just as good, or even the Sandbox (all-in-one). For this, I need to have SVN installed:

1	`aptitude install subversion`

Next, we will create a space to place Symfony:

cd /usr/share
svn checkout http://svn.symfony-project.com/branches/1.4/
mv 1.4 symfony

Then we'll verify that everything is installed correctly:

symfony/data/bin/symfony -V
symfony version 1.4.5-DEV (/usr/share/symfony/lib)

Yippee :-)

Configuration

Let's update our PATH to easily use the new binaries:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/symfony/data/bin

Initializing a New Project

Let's imagine I have a project called 'phpwol'. I'll create my project folder and initialize it:

mkdir -p /var/www/phpwol
cd /var/www/phpwol
symfony generate:project phpwol

A lot of things have just been created:

Directory	Description
`apps/`	Contains all project applications
`cache/`	Files cached by the framework
`config/`	Project configuration files
`data/`	Data files such as initial data sets
`lib/`	Project libraries and classes
`log/`	Framework log files
`plugins/`	Installed plugins
`test/`	Unit and functional test files
`web/`	The Web root directory (see below)