Poetry of Programming

How to quickly and easily install Symfony Framework on Windows? A 15 minute guide that will let you start the fun right away!

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