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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 two 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.

Method 1 - setting a virtual host

This is the most recommended method of setting up your working environment - creating a virtual host for every application. The example will show 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). Now add at the end of the file your virtual host config which should look similar to this:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your_server_name
DocumentRoot “c:/wamp/www/your_project/web”
DirectoryIndex index.php
Alias /sf c:/wamp/bin/php/php5.2.5/PEAR/data/symfony/web/sf

<Directory “c:/wamp/www/your_project/web”>
Options Indexes FollowSymlinks ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from All
</Directory>

<Directory “c:/wamp/bin/php/php5.2.5/PEAR/data/symfony/web/sf”>
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 dir in your project. You can also specify the name of the virtual server you want to setup by modifying ‘your_server_name” in the ‘ServerName your_server_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 - after an apache restart - if you type in your browser http://localhost/ your Symfony welcoming page should have all the graphics displayed correctly.

But it still can be better ;). You can declare your own domain locally. If you add a line like ‘127.0.0.1 your_name‘ to the host file (located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\)  entering an URL like http://your_name/ will take you to the homepage of your project :). 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.

Method 2 - the stupid way

If the above method is 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). The drawback is that after updating Symfony you may have to recopy that folder again to all your projects and you may also experience some problems when freezing your projects (symfony freeze command - preparing a ready-to-deploy package out of your project).

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’m assuming that you’re working on Windows XP or Vista and starting from scratch - that means without any WWW server configured on the machine.

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 Apach, MySQL and PHP 5 - 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). 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 won’t change (no clue why) - we need to do it by hand, let’s open: C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5\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 ;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.2.5;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\php5.2.5\) run the go-pear.bat file. Follow the installation steps and answer the questions, the default config should be fine, so you can answer:

• [Enter] (default value) - if we want PEAR installed systemwide.
• [Enter] - if we don’t want to change de directory structure.
• Y - we allow PEAR to modify our php.ini.
• And [Enter] twice to finish.

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.

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

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