Download PHP Symfony tutorial in PDF

Symfony in brief

A framework streamlines application development by automating many models used for a purpose. A framework also adds structure to the code, prompting the developer to write better, more readable, and more maintainable code. In the end, a framework facilitates programming because it combines complex operations into simple instructions.

Symfony is a complete framework designed to optimize the development of web applications with several key features. First, it separates business rules from a web application, server logic, and presentation views. It contains many tools and classes designed to shorten the development time of a complex web application. In addition, it automates common tasks so that the developer can focus entirely on the specificities of an application. The end result of these benefits means that you do not have to reinvent the wheel every time a new web application is built!

Symfony has been fully written in PHP 5. It has been extensively tested in various real-world projects and is currently being used for high-demand e-business websites. It is compatible with most of the available database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. It works on * nix and Windows platforms. Let's start by taking a closer look at its features.

Characteristics of the Symfony framework

Symfony was built to meet the following requirements:

• Easy to install and configure on most platforms (and guaranteed to run on standard * nix and Windows platforms)
• Independent of the database engine
• Simple to use, in most cases, but flexible enough to accommodate complex cases
• Based on the premise of the configuration convention, the developer must configure only unconventional elements.
• Meets most web best practices and design templates
• Enterprise ready - adaptable to existing information technology (IT) policies and architectures and stable enough for long-term projects
• Highly readable code, with phpDocumentor comments, for easy maintenance
• Easy to expand, allowing integration with other vendor libraries
• Features of Automated Web Projects
• Most of the common features of web projects are automated in symfony, as follows:
• The integrated internationalization layer allows data and interface translation as well as content localization.
• The presentation uses templates and layouts that can be created by HTML designers without any knowledge of the framework. Wizards reduce the amount of presentation code to be written by encapsulating large portions of code in simple function calls.
• Forms support automatic validation and repopulation, which ensures good data quality in the database and a better user experience.
• Outbound escape protects applications from attack by corrupted data.
• Cache management features reduce bandwidth usage and server load.
• Authentication and identification features make it easy to create restricted sections and manage user security.
• Routing and smart URLs make the page address part of the interface and search engines.
• Built-in e-mail and API management capabilities enable web applications to go beyond traditional browser interactions.
• Lists are more user-friendly with automated paging, sorting, and filtering.
• Factories, plug-ins and mixins offer a high level of extensibility.
• Ajax interactions are easy to implement with one-line helpers that encapsulate JavaScript effects that are compatible with multiple browsers.

Symfony a PHP framework?

Whether you are an expert in PHP 5 or a beginner in web application programming, you will be able to use symfony. The main factor in deciding whether to do it or not is the size of your project.

If you want to develop a simple website with five to ten pages, limited access to a database, and no obligation to ensure its performance or provide documentation, then you should stay with PHP alone. You would not benefit much from a web application framework, and using object orientation or an MVC model would probably slow down your development process.