Whenever I get some time, I try to learn and experiment on different frameworks. I would like to stay away from pin pointing to the frameworks I have looked, so they don’t feel bad.
Long live components
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Components are awesome!. You can plug your favourite components to any system. Thank you composer.
One strong preference choosing a framework was
- It should be built from components
Advantage
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- I could use those components on a different project without spending long time learning a different API.
Choosing Symfony as a framework
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- Symfony framework have been used in production for long, big community, and backed by Sensio Labs.
- Many of the libraries, cms and frameowrks that exists on packagist rely on symfony components.
Look at phinx a db migration tool, drupal 8 etc. These makes use of components like symfony/console, symfony/http-foundation, symfony/router etc.
Some of the good things I like in symfony console component are its helpers.
Table
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\Table;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$table = new Table($output);
$table
->setHeaders(array('ISBN', 'Title', 'Author'))
->setRows(array(
array('99921-58-10-7', 'Divine Comedy', 'Dante Alighieri'),
array('9971-5-0210-0', 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Charles Dickens'),
array('960-425-059-0', 'The Lord of the Rings', 'J. R. R. Tolkien'),
array('80-902734-1-6', 'And Then There Were None', 'Agatha Christie'),
))
;
$table->render();
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Progress bar
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\ProgressBar;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
$output = new ConsoleOutput();
// create a new progress bar (50 units)
$progress = new ProgressBar($output, 50);
// start and displays the progress bar
$progress->start();
$i = 0;
while ($i++ < 50) {
// ... do some work
// advance the progress bar 1 unit
$progress->advance();
// you can also advance the progress bar by more than 1 unit
// $progress->advance(3);
}
// ensure that the progress bar is at 100%
$progress->finish();
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Question
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\QuestionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\StringInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\ConfirmationQuestion;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\ChoiceQuestion;
$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$helper = new QuestionHelper();
$input = new StringInput('action');
$question = new ConfirmationQuestion('Continue with this action?', false);
if ($helper->ask($input, $output, $question)) {
$question = new ChoiceQuestion(
'Please select your favorite color (defaults to red)',
array('red', 'blue', 'yellow'),
0
);
$question->setErrorMessage('Color %s is invalid.');
$color = $helper->ask($input, $output, $question);
$output->writeln('You have just selected: '.$color);
} else {
$output->writeln('Exiting !');
}
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Hidden Passwords
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\QuestionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\StringInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Question\Question;
$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$helper = new QuestionHelper();
$input = new StringInput('action');
$question = new Question('What is the database password?');
$question->setHidden(true);
$question->setHiddenFallback(false);
$password = $helper->ask($input, $output, $question);
$output->writeln('Entered password : ' . $password);
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and more.. I hope you will also add symfony/console into your list.
Http Foundation
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The symfony/http-foundation is another extensively used component. It is actually Aura.Web + Aura.Session with more session handlers. Used by drupal, laravel etc in core. When working on mixed projects like drupal, laravel etc, it is good to be in your list.
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
$request = Request::createFromGlobals();
$response = new Response(
'Hello symfony',
Response::HTTP_OK,
array('content-type' => 'text/html')
);
$response->send();
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Finder
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Another wonderful component is the finder.
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<?php
use Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder;
$finder = new Finder();
$iterator = $finder
->files()
->depth(0)
->in(__DIR__);
foreach ($iterator as $file) {
print $file->getRealpath()."\n";
}
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Filesystem
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Filesystem is another nice component which helps you to copy, rename, create directories.
Complex components
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So far, the above components are easy to use. One of the complex component is the security component. It tries to do authentication and authorization.
As a person who have worked with zend framework, I love how authentication and authorization is done. I do love the latest Aura.Auth library.
If you are using symfony as a framework, there is a bundle to rescue. Yes, FOSUserBundle. I believe most of them who use symfony will be using it.
Part of the complexity may be because symfony security was based on Spring security from Java. I am not sure why Fabien choose Spring when there were good ones in the PHP world, but I hope there is a reason behind it.
Conclusion : Symfony as a framework is nice!.
