Remark: The answers generally apply to all the versions of Symfony if not specified otherwise. And the exemplary code uses Propel.

1. How to gain access to the Request object outside the action?

In any place in your Symfony project you can initialize an instance of sfContext by simply calling sfContext::getInstance() and use it to retrieve other important object including the Request.

For example:

$context = sfContext::getInstance();
$context->getActionName();
$context->getActionStack();
$context->getController();
$context->getDatabaseConnection();
$context->getLogger();
$context->getModuleDirectory();
$context->getModuleName();
$context->getRequest();
$context->getResponse();
$context->getUser();

2. How to make  an object_select_tag create a drop down containing a sorted list?

Let’s say that we have an object $record with person_id field, which is a foreign reference to a Person class. We want in our form to display object_select_tag that will contain all the possible choices of Person objects sorted for example by their name.

By calling:

object_select_tag ($record, ‘getPersonId’);

We only get a list sorted by id (probably)  – because object_select_tag uses PersonPeer::doSelect() by default.

So the solution is:

object_select_tag ($record, ‘getPersonId’, array (

‘related_class’ => ‘Person’,
‘peer_method’ => ‘doOrderedSelect’,
‘include_blank’ => true)

) ;

And we just need to create a doOrderedSelect method in PersonPeer class, that might look like this:

public static function doOrderedSelect($c = ”)
{

If(!$c)
$c = new Criteria();

$c->addAscendingOrderByColumn(PersonPeer::NAME);
return parent::doSelect($c);

}

And remember that for all of that to work Person class has to have a __toString() method [see point 3].

3. The magic __toString() method.

The most commonly used PHP5 magic method  in Symfony projects is the __toString() method, which specifies what value should be returned when the given object is cast to string (or simply used as a string).

It is a very natural programming approach to specify what ‘natural language phrase’ should be associated with an object instance.  A short example to illustrate that:

class Person extends BasePerson
{

public function __toString()
{

return $this->getName() . ‘ ‘ . $this->getSurname();

}

}

And now we can print out the name and surname of our Person class instance – let’s say $example_person – simply by writing echo $example_person.

The __toString() method is used by some of the Symfony form helpers and it’s usually worth spending a bit extra time to create those methods in our model – just for the sake of code readabilty.

But be careful when using PHP version older then 5.2 -because  __toString() method was only called when it was directly combined with echo() or print(), which might cause unexpected results sometimes.

4. How to create a paginated list in Symfony?

Symfony comes with a sfPropelPager which handles all the paging for us. I hope the preceding code is self-explanatory.

The action:

public function executeList()
{

…

$rows_per_page = sfConfig::get(’app_rows_per_page’); // Now you can set the number of rows per page in your_app/config/app.yml

$page = $this->getRequestParameter(’page’, 1);

$pager = new sfPropelPager(’YourClass’, $rows_per_page);
$pager->setCriteria($c);
$pager->setPage($page);
$pager->init();
$this->pager = $pager;

}

The template:

<?php if ($pager->haveToPaginate()): ?>
<div class=”pagination”>

<?php echo link_to(’<< ‘, ‘example/list?page=’.$pager->getFirstPage()) ?>
<?php echo link_to(’ <’, ‘example/list?page=’.$pager->getPreviousPage()) ?>

<?php $links = $pager->getLinks(); foreach ($links as $page): ?>
<?php echo ($page == $pager->getPage()) ? $page : link_to($page, ‘example/list?page=’.$page) ?>
<?php endforeach ?>

<?php echo link_to(’> ‘, ‘example/list?page=’.$pager->getNextPage()) ?>
<?php echo link_to(’ >>’, ‘example/list?page=’.$pager->getLastPage()) ?>

</div>
<?php endif; ?>

5. How to use pager with a custom peer method like doSelectJoinAll()?

Let’s assume that we have a pager used to display a list of objects with foreign references and we want to sort it by one of the fields from a foreign table. We’ll need to use o join for that and it would be nice if we could use one of the generated methods like doSelectJoin*(), e.g. doSelectJoinAll().

The solution is very simple. Before calling  $pager->init() use the pager’s setPeerMethod(). In  our case that would be:

$pager->setPeerMethod(’doSelectJoinAll’);

6. Problem with storing dates before year 1970 in some databases.

It was an issue for Symfony 1.0.X – don’t know if it applies to other versions as well.

For some db the data type date didn’t work as expected for dates prior to 01.01.1970. There exist a special, additional date type bu_date that you have to use in your schema.yml.

date_of_birth:  {  type: bu_date  }

7. JavaScript in Ajax response call is not executed.

In Symfony if the response code of the Ajax call contains JavaScript it won’t be executed by default – for security reasons.

You need to explicitly declare for Ajax helpers the ability to execute scripts in remote responses – which can be done with the script option.

Using the example from Symfony’s documentation:

<?php
// If the response of the post/delete action contains JavaScript,
// allow it to be executed by the browser
echo link_to_remote(’Delete this post’, array(
‘update’ => ‘feedback’,
‘url’    => ‘post/delete?id=’.$post->getId(),
’script’ => true,
)) ?>

8. 9. 10. … are in progress, and I’m open to your questions .

Congratulations! You have successfully created your symfony project.

Project setup successful

This project uses the symfony libraries. If you see no image in this page, you may need to configure your web server so that it gains access to the symfony_data/web/sf/ directory.

The proper configuration of the web server seems to be the most troublesome part of Symfony installation. But fortunately there are several quick ways to solve that problem. This short guide will describe three of them from the perspective of an Apache web server user.

I’m assuming that you have Symfony already properly installed (if not – the installation guide is here). I’m working on a WAMP installation of Apache+MySQL+PHP, so the directory paths in my examples will reflect that (but the guide should work for any Apache based configuration).

Method 1 – setting a virtual host

This is the most recommended method of setting up your working environment (in fact it is the only real method out there – the other described below are just workarounds ) – you should always create a virtual host for every application. This guide will teach you how to configure your web server to cope with one project (a multi-application vhost example is coming up soon ).

First – find your apache config directory (in my WAMP install it’s C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.6\conf\) and open the httpd-vhosts.conf (which is in the sub-directory extra – C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.6\conf\extra). Delete or comment out all the lines (by adding ‘#’ at the beginning of each one) if you’re not sure what they do (if you haven’t written them they are probably just examples of vhost configuration).

In Symfony 1.2 (1.1 also?) a sample vhost config file is created automatically for every project you generate. It can be found in config/vhost.sample – feel free to copy/paste that code instead of the below example.

Now add at the end of the file your virtual host config which should look similar to this (it’s just one of possible ways of configuring  a vhost – you may find other configurations that achieve the same thing but look different – they all are correct as long as they work, right? ):

NameVirtualHost *:80

Listen 127.0.0.2:80

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.2:80>

ServerName your_application_name
DocumentRoot “c:\wamp\www\your_project\web”
DirectoryIndex index.php

<Directory “c:\wamp\www\your_project\web”>

AllowOverride All
Allow from All

</Directory>

Alias /sf “c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\PEAR\data\symfony\web\sf”

<Directory “c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\PEAR\data\symfony\web\sf”>

AllowOverride All
Allow from All

</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

In lines ‘ Alias /sf “c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\PEAR\data\symfony\web\sf” ‘ and ‘ <Directory “c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\PEAR\data\symfony\web\sf”> ‘ replace my path with the path to your symfony/web/sf dir. And do the same with lines ‘ DocumentRoot “c:\wamp\www\your_project\web” ‘ and ‘ <Directory “c:\wamp\www\your_project\web”> ‘ changing the path to one that points to the web directory in your project.

And you should also specify the name of your virtual server by modifying ‘your_application_name’ in the ‘ServerName your_application_name’ line.

Make sure that in the httpd.conf file (main Apache config file located in a directory like C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.6\conf) the line ‘Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf‘ is uncommented (no ‘#’ before it).

Now we need to declare our own domain locally, by adding a line like ‘127.0.0.2 your_application_name’ to the host file (located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc). Just make sure that you add your line after ‘127.0.0.1 localhost‘ (which should be in fact the first line). You may also need admin privileges to modify that file.

Now – after an Apache restart – if you type in your browser http://your_application_name/ your Symfony welcoming page should have all the graphics displayed correctly.

Method 2 – project freezing

You can obtain a ready-to-deploy package from your Symfony project by using the freeze command. If you execute in the root of your project:

symfony freeze [c:/path/to/your/symfony/data/dir]

All Symfony core files will be copied to the current project, including the ones that where missing in the web/sf directory. The freeze command also changes some paths in your project configuration so it will now address the Symfony libraries that were also copied to your project not the global ones. The main drawback is that if you want to upgrade Symfony you’ll have to unfreeze (command opposite to freeze) and freeze again all your projects or copy/overwrite files manually. And there may be some path issues if your project is not in the web root of your web server directory.

Method 3 – the stupid way

If the above methods are not working for you – just go ahead and copy the symfony_data_path/web/sf/ directory to your_project_path/web/ (so in my case that would be copying C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\PEAR\data\symfony\web\sf to the C:\wamp\www\your_project\web directory). As before the downside of this workaround is that after updating Symfony you will have to manually recopy that folder again to all your projects and there probably will be some path issues when accessing plugin assets or when using absolute paths in links (but you probably won’t even notice if you’ll always use symfony helpers for handling your links).

Solution 1 – When we have access to PHP configurations files.

If  we can edit the PHP config files the problem boils down to changing one variable in PHP.ini. Usually the right PHP.ini can be found in the main PHP dir (for example in my PHP WAMP intallation it’s located in C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5). And now we just need to open it and look for the line:

max_execution_time = 30

Changing the 30 seconds setting to something like 120 seconds should do the trick. And all we need to do now is to restart the web server.

Solution 2 – On a remote server.

There is a nice PHP function called set_time_limit ( int $seconds ), every time it’s called it sets the timeout counter with the given value, which means that the script will now be able to run for $seconds. Execution of set_time_limit(0) removes the PHP timeout limit.

Unfortunately this will not work if PHP is running in safe mode. For further details consult the PHP manual.

Other timeout possibilities

It’s also worth mentioning that most of webservers have their own timeout counters – e.g. in Apache it’s set to 300 s by default. 6 minutes is usually plenty of time but it still can be changed if we desire so . The timeout setting can be found in httpd-default.conf file which is located with the rest of Apache conf files (e.g. my path is C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.6\conf\extra).

The plug-in ads a Symfony view to Eclipse which extends the normal PHP Perspective in PDT (PDT stands for PHP Development Tools) an gives us a direct access to all framework-defined actions plus there’s a helpful YAML editor included for Symfony configuration files ( and last but not least a nice ‘s’ icon appears next to Symfony projects ).

What is Eclipse? It’s a big open-source community project aimed to create a “development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle“. Especially Java developers will find it useful (or even as a must-have software), but it also offers an extensive IDE for C/C++, PHP… and much more.

It seems that as for the moment Symfoclipse works properly only with Symfony 1.0.X.
You can still use it with 1.1 or later but you won’t get much more than a YML editor.

0. You’ll definitely need Symfony up and running

( Symfony Framework installation guide. )

1a. All-In-One Pack = Eclipse + PDT – for those who don’t have Eclipse installed.

As said before Symfoclipse needs Eclipse with a PDT plug-in configured. The easiest way to do that is to download a All-In-One bundle which works out of the box ( I strongly recommend getting a Release Build from the PDT download | PDT Home ). You’ll also need to have a Java SE 5.0+ installed on your PC (you probably have – but it maybe worth upgrading anyway). The install process is quite straight forward – just extract the zip file and your done.

Getting used to Eclipse layout and functionality may take a while, but there are many great manuals out there. And it’s worth it.

1b. Installing PDT – if you already have Eclipse.

If you have Eclipse you can install PDT by its update manager. Go to Help Software Updates Find and Install. Choose the “Search For New Feature to Install“, add a new site (”New Remote Site…”) with the following link “http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/” and press Next to start the update process. In case of any problems refer to the Eclipse Wiki.

2. Downloading and installing Symfoclipse

The installation process is the same as with most Eclipse plug-ins and it’s done via the update manager. Go to Help Software Updates Find and Install. Choose the “Search For New Feature to Install“, add a new site with the “http://noy.cc/symfoclipse/” link and press Next to start the updating. After the download has finished you’ll need to restart Eclipse and you’re done.

Symfoclipse functionality

Symfony View

It’s a modified PHP Exlporer view and it can be activated by selecting Symfony View in Show View (Window Show View Other). It enables the CLI (Command Line Interface) commands to be accessible directly by right-clicking the Symfony directories in project listing.

So let’s start off with a first app. After creating a normal PHP project (File New PHP Project) we need to right-click it’s icon and select “Init Project” from the very bottom of the context menu. The result is the same as entering symfony init-project in the command line and you can notice all the messages appearing in the Console.

After the project initialization you can right-click again ( notice the ‘s‘ icon is added ) – you should see more Symfony Framework functions available.

YAML Editor

Symfoclipse adds also an YAML editor, which is very simple but has one functionality worth mentioning – a build-in auto validator that comes in handy when editing Symfony’s configuration files ( which tend do be easily buggable ).

The editors automatically opens .yml and .yaml files from our projects. If you want to open a different file with it you’ll need to right-click it an choose Open With Symfoclipse YAML Editor

Of course the table is here just to give you a rough idea which font size matches which. The actual display size depends on your browser, browser settings and font type used, but in most cases it should be just fine. Usually a quite good scaler for converting px to pt is a 0,75 multiplier (when comparing in a browser with font size set to standard).

The point of reference for relative values like ems and percent in this table is a standard font size – 16px (the 1em = 16px relation is set by default by most browsers when there’s no font-size declared beforehand).

I assume that you’re working on Windows XP or Vista and starting from scratch – that means without any WWW server configured on the machine – this guide will cover all of that .  Enjoy!

What will we need?

• WAMP (version 2.0 at the moment of writing)
• and… that’s all!

Using WAMP we’ll install PEAR and Symfony right afterwards, but starting from the beginning:

Part 1 – Installing WAMP

WAMP is a self-installing, all-in-the-box package with Apache, MySQL and PHP 5 (5.2.8+) – and that’s exactly what we need (there is also PHPMyAdmin and SQLitemanager included which is nice and may come in handy). Of course it’s not the only pack like that available on the internet, very similar to WAMP is for example XAMPP – the choice is up to you. You could also install all the components manually… but what’s the point?

WAMP will auto-extract it’s files (let’s say under C:\wamp) and start off without any problems. Voila! – a running server with default configuration! That was fast, wasn’t it

You can configure WAMP’s elements by clicking its tray icon. (You can also translate WAMP to a variety of languages – right click on the icon and see for yourself )

If your WAMP fails to start and you get a warning that port 80 is being used (and you don’t have another HTTP server running on the machine) – it can be Skype. Make sure that in Skype’s options (Advanced >> Connection) the checkbox about using port 80 as alternative port for incoming connections is not ticked.

Symfony needs PHP-XSL and Apache URL Rewrite Module to function normally (which are off by default on most installs). Let’s start by activating the Rewrite module – left click on WAMP’s tray icon and than in Apache >> Apache Modules menu select rewrite_module (server will automatically reboot). Now it’s time for XSL, as in the step before: – in PHP >> PHP Extension menu look for php_xsl and click it. But there is one more php.ini file, which WAMP sometimes won’t change (no clue why) – we need to do it by hand, let’s open: C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.8\php.ini and remove “;” from the line:

;extension=php_xsl.dll

Now we should add environment variables to have access to PHP i MySQL under the command line. Right-click on My Computer, than Properties. Switch to Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button. At the end of variable PATH let’s add something like ;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.8;C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql5.0.45\bin (paths to MySQL and PHP files separated by a semicolon).

Part 2 – PEAR Install

PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) is a PHP extension distribution system. Installation files are bundled with PHP by default, so this won’t take us long.

In the WAMP’s PHP directory (ie. C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.8\) run the go-pear.bat file. Follow the installation steps and answer the questions, the default config should be just fine.

Inside the PHP directory the installer created a PEAR_ENV.reg file, which after double-clicking will add all the PEAR variables to the registry – no need to do it by hand.

Part 3 – Finally the Symfony

Open the command line and write:

> pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com

If everything goes wel, you’ll see:

Adding Channel “pear.symfony-project.com” succeeded
Discovery of channel “pear.symfony-project.com” succeeded

So the time has come, write the magic line:

> pear install symfony/symfony

The download of the package shouldn’t take long (~2 MB), and PEAR automates the whole process.

Finally, to check if Symfony is installed correctly write:

symfony -V

Which should print out on the screen the version of Symfony you’ve just downloaded.

Part 4 – Your first Symfony project

Considering everything went smooth you can now write in the command line:

> cd C:\wamp\www
> mkdir myproject
> cd myproject
> symfony init-project myproject
> symfony init-app testapp

For Symfony 1.2 the proper way to init a project is:

> symfony generate:project myproject
> symfony generate:app —escaping-strategy=on —csrf-secret=Unique$ecret testapp

When calling the generate:app task, we have also passed two security related options:

• –escaping-strategy – Enables output escaping to prevent XSS attacks
• –csrf-secret – Enables session tokens in forms to prevent CSRF attacks

Yes, Symfony 1.2 will automatically protect us from the two most widespread vulnerabilities found on the web!

Congratulations!

The effects of your work can be seen at http://127.0.0.1/myproject/web/

And that’s that. I wish you many successful projects in Symfony

If you want to move on from here (with your brand new Symfony Framework on-board ):

• See my guide on configuring Apache to work hand in hand with your Symfony applications.
• Visit the Symfony official web page and enjoy the variety of guides, tutorials and well written documentation.