How Starting PHP Development with symfony framework in Linux Environment

what is symfony ?

The symfony framework is a full-stack MVC framework that helps you develop websites
faster. It also establishes a set of best practices that will help you to develop maintainable and
secure websites. And advocating best practices starts as soon as you want to install the
framework itself

How it install in to your computer

Installing symfony is not very much different to installing any other PHP software but, to
make your installation secure from the start, you should not just put all the files under web root directory

what are the Prerequisites

First, ensure that you have PHP 5.2.4 at a minimum

Launch the configuration checker script from the command line:

$ php check_configuration.php

If there is a problem with your PHP configuration, the output of the command will give you
hints on what to fix and how to fix it.

step 1 Initializing the Project Directory

Before installing symfony, you first need to create a directory that will host all the files related to your project:

$ mkdir -p /home/sfproject
$ cd /home/sfproject


step 2 Choosing the Installation Location

You can install symfony globally on your machine, or embed it into each of your project. The latter is the recommended one as projects will then be totally independent from each others As a best practice, install the symfony framework files in the lib/vendor project directory. So, first, create this directory:

$ mkdir -p lib/vendo

The easiest way to install symfony is to download the archive for the version you choose from the symfony website. Go to the installation page for the version you have just chosen, symfony instance Download the archive, put it under the freshly created lib/vendor/ directory, unarchive it, and rename the directory to symfony:


$ cd lib/vendor
$ tar zxpf symfony-1.4.0.tgz
$ mv symfony-1.4.0 symfony
$ rm symfony-1.4.0.tgz

If use Subversion, it is even better to use the svn:externals property to embed symfony into your project in the lib/vendor/ directory:

$ svn pe svn:externals lib/vendor/

step 3 Project Creation

From the sfproject/ directory, run the symfony generate:project task to actually create the symfony project:

$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony generate:project PROJECT_NAME

The generate:project task generates the default structure of directories and files needed
for a symfony project

Directory Description

apps/ Hosts all project applications
cache/ The files cached by the framework
config/ The project configuration files
data/ Data files like initial fixtures
lib/ The project libraries and classes
log/ The framework log files
plugins/ The installed plugins
test/ The unit and functional test files
web/ The web root directory (see below)


step 4 Installation Verification

Now that symfony is installed, check that everything is working by using the symfony command line to display the symfony version

$ cd ../..
$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony -V

get the symfony options and tasks list

$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony

step 5 Configuring the Database

When creating a new project, Doctrine is enabled by default. Configuring the database used by Doctrine is as simple as using the configure:database task

$ php symfony configure:database "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbname" root password

step 6 Application Creation

Now, create the frontend application by running the generate:app task

$ php symfony generate:app frontend

under the apps/frontend/ directory:

Directory Description

config/ The application configuration files
lib/ The application libraries and classes
modules/ The application code (MVC)
templates/ The global template files

step 7 Directory Structure Rights

Before trying to access your newly created project, you need to set the write permissions on the cache/ and log/ directories to the appropriate levels, so that your web server can write to them

$ chmod 777 cache/ log/


step 8 Web Server Configuration

Locate and open the httpd.conf configuration file and add the following configuration at the end














This configuration makes Apache listen to port 8080 on your machine, so the website will be accessible at the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/


You can change 8080 to any number, but favour numbers greater than 1024 as they do not require administrator rights

Thank you.