Although this framework contains many powerful features, most developers do not exploit Symfony to its full potential.

This book makes it easy to get started and produce a powerful and professional-looking web site utilizing the many features of Symfony. Taking you through a real-life application, it covers all major Symfony framework features without pushing you into too much theoretical detail, as well as throwing some light on the best practices for rapid application development.

This book is written for PHP developers who want to get started with Symfony 1.3 or for those that are currently using Symfony 1.0/1.1/1.2.

By reading the book and following the example web application you will learn about:

• Using the form framework
• Using the new send email features
• Creating Symfony command line tasks
• Using the admin generator to create an entire backend
• Securing the backend of your application
• Internationalization
• Installing, using and creating your own plugins
• Learning about caching by using both Symfony’s caching framework and memcached
• Working with the Propel ORM
• Using JQuery and form widgets
• Bridging other library’s like Ezcomponents and the Zend Framework
• Deploying you application

Just to show you that the book is worth buying please download and view Chapter 4: User Interaction and Email Automation

To purchase your copy please vist Packt‘s site.

Review:

Federico Cargnelutti

Fabian

Example:
To see if an author has a comment

$author = AuthorPeer::retrieveByPK($id);
$authorComments = CommentPeer::getAuthorComments($author->getAuthorId());

//In the model
public static function getAuthorComments($id)
{

    $c = new Criteria();
    $c->add(self::AUTHOR_ID, $id);

    return self::doSelect($c);

}

$author = AuthorPeer::getAuthorComments($id);
$author = array_pop($author);

...
...

//In the model
public static function getAuthorComments($id)
{
$c = new Criteria();
$c->add(self::AUTHOR_ID, $id);

$c->addJoin(self::AUTHOR_ID, CommentPeer::AUTHOR_ID, Criteria::LEFT_JOIN);
$c->setLimit(1);
return self::doSelect($c);
}

[[code markup="none"]]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[[/code]]

Symfony Pagination Partial

Two years ago I wrote my own php MVC framework. It comprised of Smarty and ADOdb, and to be honest it got the job done. It was easy for both the non-technical and technical developers to get to grips with and decreased development time. But why did I re-invent the wheel? Well back then I tried and tested a number of frameworks, and because we were running PHP4 it seemed easier to create my own.

Early last year I tested out both cake php and Symfony. I wrote a small test website with both frameworks, and from my experience Symfony was easier to get to grips with and done a lot of the work for me. A few of the features that I found really good was the CLI, Lime testing, deployment, generators and best of all, its plugin architecture.

To give you an idea of the time we saved when creating an admin area, it usually took us a good few days for a news administration feature. With the aid of Symfony’s admin generator that time went down to a good 30 minutes, which in anyones book is excellent. After figuring out how to write plugins it was then time to turn parts of the administration areas into plugins.

My first plugin is for a news module. Not only does it provide support for frontend news, but it also provides the backend administration feature as well. The plugin works greate, and as part of the second release I integrated my plugin with the sfThumbnail plugin. Now the plugin allows up to one image per story. Thanks to the sfThumbnail plugin, in around 4 lines of code uploaded images are resized and thumbnails are produced. This plugin took around 6 hours from start to finish and has been applied to several sites now. So if you look at the big picture that’s a lot of time saved.

Since I have been using symfony I have seen the community, documentation, plugins and user base grow tremendously. A little later this year I will be making the plugins and snippets available. I would definitely encourage others to switch to Symfony if they haven’t already done so.

Resources:

• Symfony tutorial
• Sitepoint tutorial
• Symfony Offical book
• Symfony plugins
• Symfony Resource Central
• Yahoo! Bookmarks uses Symfony
• Eclipse Plugin
• Eclipse PDT and Symfony

However, i found out that deleting the schema.yml file fixes the problem.

rm -f config/schema.yml