Rapid Web Development (for libraries!) with Symfony 2

1. Rapid Web Development (for libraries!) with Symfony 2 Justin Clark Junior Web Developer Berkman Center

2. So many questions • What is it? • Why use it? • How's it designed? • What's it do? • What else does it do?

3. What is Symfony 2? • Symfony 2 is a PHP Framework for web development • Symfony 2 is MVC • Symfony 2 is OOP • Symfony 2 is probably a bunch more acronyms • Symfony 2 is not Symfony 1 (>=PHP 5.3) • Symfony 2 is HTTP-centric • Symfony 2 is like bits of Rails and like bits of Java http://symfony.com Released July 28, 2011 after ~2.5 years development

4. Why Symfony 2? PHP was a given Contenders in the area: • Zend is old and huge and scary. • Yii is new and small and one guy. • CakePHP is old and hacky. • CodeIgniter is small and hacky. Symfony 2 is new hotness. Who uses it?     Dailymotion, Yahoo! Answers, Drupal, phpBB

5. "New hotness" is a stupid phrase.Really, why Symfony 2? Non-technical: • Very modular (standard distro is 21 standalone modules) • Very flexible (dependency injection, service container) • Targeted at serious apps (stable API) • Backed by a company (software as service - take it or leave it) • Very little magic • Kinda, sorta portable • MIT License • Good docs for beginners • Really good code commenting • Responsive community (response from core dev in 4 minutes) • External security audit • On Github (most forked and most watched in PHP, 13th and 24th overall) 

6. I want CODE Technical: • Includes good ORM (and ODM, but I haven't used it) • Includes very good templating language (safe and expressive) • Includes good asset manager (auto combining, filtering [closure, pngcrush, etc.]) • Includes very good debugging tools (web debug toolbar, linked exceptions, stack traces) • Includes very good caching (includes reverse-proxy, speaks ESI) • Includes good security tools (basic auth through X.509, ACLs) • Includes very good testing tools (PHPUnit and functional testing) • Includes very good generators (models, views, controllers, forms, tests, bundles) • Includes handy autoloading (namespaces)

7. Not so awesome things • Learning curve • API Docs are complete but so-so • Few advanced docs • Few advanced best-practices docs • It's still PHP

8. Architecture Request-Response Model Modularity is big selling point. Three main constructs for modularity: • Bundles • Services • Events

9. Modularity - Bundles • Apps are composed of "bundles" • Bundles are basically packages • They includes models, views, controllers, and whatever else • Bundles can inherit (child bundles) • Zend libraries can be bundles • Apps can override any part of any bundle • New package manager in the works

10. Modularity - Services • Bundles can provide services • Services are externally configurable (constructor injection, setter injection, property injection, optional config interface) • Services can require or include other services • Services get registered with the service container • Every controller has access to the service container • It's dependency injection

11. Modularity - Events • Every controller has access to the event dispatcher • It's a hook system to modify any part of any controller

12. Handy Bundles • Doctrine2 • Twig • Debugging

13. Doctrine2

14. Twig

15. Debugging • Pretty web toolbar • Lots of info pages • Pretty exception handling http://dev5.berkmancenter.org/app.php

16. What I didn't talk about • Console Tasks • Session-handling • Form validation • Model constraints • Routing • User Bundle (and symfony2bundles.org) • YML, XML, Annotation options • Emailing • Environments • Logging • i18n • Git integration • etc.

17. Takeaways • Good for little things, good for big things • Learning curve fairly shallow for little things, steep for big things • Little things can be done really quickly • Big things take more time • It's PHP - but modern, solid, secure PHP