Symfony

Symfony

File:Symfony.gif
File:Symfony project.png Symfony default project
Developer(s)	Sensio Labs
Stable release	1.4.1 / December 8, 2009
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Web application framework
License	MIT License
Website	symfony-project.org

Symfony is a web application framework written in PHP which follows the model-view-controller (MVC) paradigm. Released under the MIT license, Symfony is free software. The symfony-project.com website launched on October 18, 2005.

Symfony should not be confused with Symphony CMS, the Open Source XML/XSLT content management system.

Goal

Symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications and to replace repetitive coding tasks. It requires a few prerequisites for installation: Unix, Linux, Mac OS or Microsoft Windows with a web server and PHP 5 installed. It is currently compatible with the following Object-relational mappings: Propel and Doctrine.

Symfony has low performance overheads when dealing with an environment that supports a PHP accelerator. It should be noted however, that in typical shared hosting environments where a PHP accelerator is not available, Symfony suffers from a relatively high performance overhead.^{[citation needed]}

Symfony is aimed at building robust applications in an enterprise context, and aims to give developers full control over the configuration: from the directory structure to the foreign libraries, almost everything can be customized. To match enterprise development guidelines, Symfony is bundled with additional tools to help developers test, debug and document projects.^{[citation needed]}

Technical

Symfony makes use of many common and well understood enterprise design patterns, such as Model-View-Controller. Symfony was heavily inspired by other Web Application Frameworks such as Ruby On Rails.

Symfony makes heavy use of existing PHP open source projects as part of the framework, such as:

• Propel or Doctrine, as Object Relational Mapping layer
• Creole, Database abstraction layer (v 1.0 and 1.1, with Propel)
• PDO Database abstraction layer (1.1, with Doctrine and Propel 1.3)
• PRADO, an event-driven PHP web application framework, for Internationalization support
• Spyc, a YAML parser (v 1.2)
• Pake, command-line helper (v 1.0)

It also includes a number of Open Source Javascript frameworks and libraries:

• Prototype or jQuery, as javascript framework (v 1.0 and 1.1)
• script.aculo.us, for visual effects (v 1.0 and 1.1)
• Dynarch.com, for the DHTML Calendar (v 1.0 and 1.1)
• TinyMCE, for Rich Text Editing (v 1.0)
• FCKeditor, for Rich Text Editing
• TCPDF library for generating PDF documents

As of Symfony release 1.2, no Javascript framework is selected as the default, leaving inclusion and implementation of a Javascript library to the developers.

Sponsors

Symfony is sponsored by Sensio, a French web agency. The first name was Sensio Framework, and all classes were prefixed with sf. Later on when it was decided to launch it as open source framework, the brainstorming resulted in the name symfony (being renamed to Symfony from version 1.3 on), the name which depicts the theme and class name prefixes.

Real-world usage

Symfony is used by the open-source Q&A service Askeet and many more applications, including Delicious and the 20 million users of Yahoo! Bookmarks. As of February 2009, Dailymotion has ported part of its code to use Symfony, and is continuing the transition.

Development Roadmap

The upcoming new release version of Symfony will include new features such as:

• A new form generation framework, first introduced in version 1.2
• A new admin generator (referred to as scaffolding in Rails) which makes use of the new form framework' and is no longer implemented as a helper.
• Object relationship mapping declared in a separate plugin, rather than being integrated into the ORM
• Choice of ORM (Doctrine or Propel, or a combination of the two)
• Classes re-factored for looser coupling between objects, allowing for more user flexibility in using objects and fewer dependencies (similar in principle to the Zend Framework).
• Routing rules and route objects more closely follow REST design principals.

Symfony 1.3 and Symfony 1.4

Symfony 1.3 and 1.4 are announced for November 2009. Both versions will be identical, but 1.4 will not support the 1.3 deprecated features. The many new features and enhancements include:

• Symfony Mailer: Symfony will provide native mailing functionnalities, built on top of Swift Mailer [1], a project taken over by Fabien Potencier (founder of Symfony).

• Doctrine as a default ORM. Propel will still be supported, but the developer will have to activate it manually.

• Performance enhancements: The form framework will have new widgets, an easier access to the widget's methods will be implemented, as well as a better support for I18N. The autoloading will be improved so that the developer doesn't have to clear the cache each time a new class is added.

Releases

Color	Meaning
Red	Old release; not supported
Yellow	Old release; still supported
Green	Current release
Blue	Future release

Version	Release date	Support	PHP version	End of maintenance	Notes
1.0	January 2007	3 years	>= 5.0	January 2010
1.1	June 2008	1 year	>= 5.1	June 2009	security-related patches will be applied until June 2010
1.2	December 2008	1 year	>= 5.2	November 2009
1.3	November 2009	1 year	>= 5.2	November 2010
1.4	November 2009	3 years	>= 5.2	January 2013	1.4 is identical to 1.3, but does not support the 1.3 deprecated features.
2.0	late 2010 (planned)		>= 5.3

See also

• Comparison of web application frameworks
• Lime unit testing framework

Further reading

• Potencier, Fabien and Zaninotto, François. (2007). The Definitive Guide to symfony. Apress. ISBN 1590597869.
• Potencier, Fabien. (2009). Practical symfony (2009). Sensio Labs Books. Doctrine edition, ISBN 978-2918390060, Propel edition, 978-2918390077, and Spanish edition available on lulu.com.
• Fabien Potencier, Hugo Hamon: Symfony, Mieux développer en PHP avec Symfony 1.2 et Doctrine, Eyrolles 2009, ISBN 978-2212124941, french
• [Tim Bowler], Wojciech Bancer (2009). Symfony 1.3 Web Application Development, Packt. ISBN 9781847194565.

External links

• Symfony Project Homepage
• Symfony 1.2 Documentation
• Symfonians.net - A Community of Projects Using the Symfony Framework
• SymfonyLab.com - Symfony tips and tricks, free plugins
• Symfony at the Open Directory Project