Symfony

Symfony

Symfony2 Standard Edition welcome page
Original author(s)	Fabien Potencier
Developer(s)	Symfony contributors, SensioLabs
Initial release	22 October 2005
Stable release	3.0.2[1] / 3 February 2016
Development status	Active
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Web application framework
License	MIT license
Website	symfony.com

Symfony is a PHP web application framework for MVC applications. Symfony is free software and released under the MIT license. The symfony-project.com website launched on October 18, 2005.^[2]

Symfony should not be confused with Symphony CMS.

Goal

Symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications and to replace repetitive coding tasks.

Symfony has a low performance overhead used with a bytecode cache.

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.

Technical

Symfony was heavily inspired by other web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Django, and Spring.^[3]

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

• Propel or Doctrine as object-relational mapping layers^[4]
• PDO database abstraction layer (1.1, with Doctrine and Propel 1.3)
• PHPUnit, a unit testing framework
• Twig, a templating engine
• Swift Mailer, an e-mail library

Symfony also makes use of its own components, which are freely available on the Symfony Components site for various other projects:

• Symfony YAML, a YAML parser based upon Spyc
• Symfony Event Dispatcher
• Symfony Dependency Injector, a dependency injector
• Symfony Templating, a templating engine

Using plugins, Symfony is able to support JavaScript frameworks and many more PHP projects, such as:

• Prototype or jQuery
• script.aculo.us, for visual effects
• lessphp, a Less-to-CSS converter
• TinyMCE or CKEditor, for rich text editing
• TCPDF, a PHP library for generating PDF documents

The inclusion and implementation of a JavaScript library is left to the user.

Sponsors

Symfony is sponsored by SensioLabs, a French software developer and professional services provider.^[5] The first name was Sensio Framework,^[6] 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 2 and on), the name which depicts the theme and class name prefixes.^[7]

Real-world usage

• Symfony is used by the open-source Q&A service Askeet and many more applications, including Delicious.^[8]
• At one time it was used for 20 million users of Yahoo! Bookmarks.^[9]
• As of February 2009, Dailymotion.com has ported part of its code to use Symfony, and is continuing the transition.^[10]
• Symfony2 is used by OpenSky, a social shopping platform, and the Symfony framework is also used by the massively multiplayer online browser game eRepublik, and by the content management framework eZ Publish in version 5.^[11]
• Drupal 8, phpBB and a number of other large applications have incorporated components of Symfony.^[12][13]
• Symfony2 is also used by Meetic, one of the largest online dating platforms in the world, on most of its websites for implementing its business logic in the backend.^[14]
• Symfony components are also used in other web application frameworks including Laravel, which is another full stack framework, and Silex, which is a microframework.^[15]
• As of February 12, 2013 the massive wiki-database video game website GiantBomb.com converted from Django to Symfony following an acquisition.
• Vogue France's website is also built on the Symfony framework^[16]

Symfony's own website has a comprehensive showcase of sites: http://symfony.com/showcase/

Releases

Color	Meaning
Red	Release no longer supported
Green	Release still supported
Blue	Future release

Symfony manages its releases through a time-based model; a new Symfony release comes out every six months: one in May and one in November.
This release process has been adopted as of Symfony 2.2, and all the "rules" explained in this document must be strictly followed as of Symfony 2.4.

The standard version of Symfony is maintained for eight months, whereas long-term support (LTS) versions are supported for three years. A new LTS release is published biennially.^[17]

Version	Release date	Support	PHP version	End of maintenance	Notes
1.0	January 2007	Three years	≥ 5.0	January 2010
1.1	June 2008	One year	≥ 5.1	June 2009	Security-related patches were applied until June 2010
1.2	December 2008	One year	≥ 5.2	November 2009
1.3	November 2009	One year	≥ 5.2.4	November 2010
1.4	November 2009	Three years	≥ 5.2.4	November 2012	LTS version. 1.4 is identical to 1.3, but it does not support the 1.3 deprecated features.[18]
2.0[19]	July 2011[20]		≥ 5.3.2	March 2013	Last 2.0.x release was Symfony 2.0.25[21]
2.1[22]	September 2012	Eight months	≥ 5.3.3	June 2013	More components are part of the stable API.
2.2	March 2013	Eight months	≥ 5.3.3	November 2013	Various new features.[23]
2.3	June 2013	Three years	≥ 5.3.3	May 2016	The first LTS release, only three months development, normally six months.[24]
2.4	November 2013	Eight months	≥ 5.3.3	July 2014	The first 2.x branch release with complete backwards compatibility.[25]
2.5	May 2014	Eight months	≥ 5.3.3	January 2015
2.6	November 2014	Eight months	≥ 5.3.3	July 2015
2.7	May 2015	Three years	≥ 5.3.9	May 2018	LTS release.
2.8	November 2015	Three years	≥ 5.3.9	November 2018	LTS release.
3.0	November 2015	Eight months	≥ 5.5.9	July 2016
3.1	May 2016	Eight months	≥ 5.5.9	January 2017
3.2	November 2016	Eight months	≥ 5.?.?	July 2017
3.3	May 2017	Eight months	≥ 5.?.?	January 2018
3.4	November 2017	Three years	≥ 5.?.?	November 2020	LTS release.

See also

• Comparison of web frameworks
• Lime
• Zend Framework

References

1. "Symfony 3.0.2 released". Symfony Blog. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
2. Symfony Web PHP Framework » Blog » Two years of symfony
3. High Performance PHP Framework for Web Development - Symfony. Symfony-reloaded.org. Retrieved on 2014-05-30.
4. The symfony and Doctrine book
5. Learn symfony: A Beginner's Tutorial
6. Symfony framework forum: General discussion => New symfony tagline brainstorming
7. Comments by Sensio Owner
8. Symfony Blog - Delicious Preview built with symfony
9. Symfony Blog - Yahoo! Bookmarks uses symfony
10. Symfony Blog - Dailymotion, powered by symfony
11. Symfony2 meets eZ Publish 5. Symfony (2012-07-02). Retrieved on 2014-05-30.
12. Drupal (Projects using Symfony). Retrieved on 2015-12-01.
13. http://symfony.com/projects
14. http://www.slideshare.net/meeticTech/meetic-backend-mutation-with-symfony
15. - Projects using Symfony
16. http://symfony.com/showcase/
17. symfony-docs/contributing/community/releases.rst at 4cd6dc2825924c9569621bf749f168a7ba2a235d · symfony/symfony-docs · GitHub. Github.com. Retrieved on 2016-03-16.
18. Symfony Blog - About symfony 1.3 and 1.4
19. Symfony blog - Why will Symfony 2.0 finally use PHP 5.3?
20. Symfony blog - Symfony2 release
21. 2.0.23 released. Symfony (2013-03-20). Retrieved on 2014-05-30.
22. Symfony 2.1.0 released
23. 2.2.0. Symfony (2013-03-01). Retrieved on 2014-05-30.
24. 2.3.0, the first LTS, is now available. Symfony (2013-06-03). Retrieved on 2014-05-30.
25. 2.4.0 released. Symfony (2013-12-03). Retrieved on 2014-05-30.

Further reading

• Potencier, Fabien and Zaninotto, François. (2007). The Definitive Guide to symfony. Apress. ISBN 1-59059-786-9.
• Potencier, Fabien. (2009). Practical symfony (2009). Sensio Labs Books. Doctrine edition, ISBN 978-2-918390-06-0, 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 978-2-212-12494-1, French
• Tim Bowler, Wojciech Bancer (2009). Symfony 1.3 Web Application Development, Packt. ISBN 978-1-84719-456-5.

External links

• Symfony Project Homepage
• Symfony 1.4 Documentation
• Symfony2 Homepage
• Symfony2 News Updates
• Symfonians.net - A Community of Projects Using the Symfony Framework
• Mobicules.com - CodeIgniter vs Symfony - quick roundup
• Symfony at DMOZ
• LExpress: Fork of symfony 1.4 with dic, form enhancements, latest swiftmailer, better performance and composer compatible
• Symfony Certification: self-study guide