What is Symfony?
Get started
Documentation
Community
Services
News

Latest News

New in Symfony 2.3: Small things matter

by Fabien Potencier – May 17, 2013

What happened last week in Symfony?

This week, the new Symfony 2.3 branch was created. In addition, the first Symfony 2.3 release candidate version was published, which includes tons of great small improvements. Lastly, one of the biggest Symfony events of the year, the Symfony Live Portland 2013 conference, will take place next week.

Upcoming Events

The Symfony Community organizes events all over the world on a regular basis. Here are the next ones.

United States, Portland — SymfonyLive Portland 2013

from May 20, 2013 to May 24, 2013

Netherlands, Utrecht — Symfony Meetup - Netherlands/Utrecht

on May 22, 2013, from 19:00 to 22:00

France, Montpellier — eZ UnConference #2

from May 27, 2013 to May 29, 2013

Germany, München — Symfony User Group München

on June 05, 2013, from 18:30 to 22:30
About

Blog

New symfony book: "A Gentle Introduction to symfony 1.4"
by Fabien Potencier – May 24, 2010 – 18 comments

Support symfony!
Buy this book
or donate.

Buy A Gentle Introduction to symfony from amazon.com

People keep asking me about when we will publish the "definitive guide" book for symfony 1.4. We already have quite an extension documentation on symfony, but the definitive guide has a different way to teach you symfony that is best suited for some people. So, in the last few months, I have updated it to match the current version of symfony.

This updated version of "the book" is released under the GFDL license as was the original book (all other symfony books are covered by Creative Commons licenses). The license stipulates that all the material is under this license, except for the title, which is owned by APress, the original editor. That's why I have changed the title to "A Gentle Introduction to symfony".

So, with this new version of "the book", here is what you need to read, based on your needs:

Want to learn symfony? read the "Practical symfony" book if you want to learn by doing a real project or read the "Gentle introduction to symfony" if you want more theory and in-depth explanations of the main features;
Want to find everything about configuring symfony? Browse the "Reference guide" book.
Want to learn what changed in the recent versions? Read the "What's new?" and "How to upgrade" tutorials;
Want to learn more advanced stuff? Browse the "More with symfony" book.

That's a lot of documentation for both beginners and advanced users. The symfony core team, some authors, and the translation teams spent a lot of time writing and translating documentation for the latest versions of symfony. And as a matter of fact, the symfony 1.3/1.4 versions are the most documented versions of symfony, ever.

So, why publish yet another book about symfony? The definitive guide book has some advantages over the existing books:

More time is spent describing the philosophy of the framework in the first two chapters (introduction to the MVC model, ...);
Each feature has its own chapter or section in the book. Looking for the documentation of a specific feature is easier (in the "Practical symfony" book for instance, it's more difficult to find things are they are described in the context of an application creation).

I have spent quite some time to update this book and we have some new chapters too: one about Doctrine (thank to Jon), one on forms (thank to François), and one on emails.

The book is available as a printed book on Amazon and probably many other online bookstores. And of course, you can also read it online for free.

Add a Comment

Connect to post a comment

Comments

#1 jp_morvan said on the 2010/05/24 at 12:06

Another time : Thank you !
All your books were really helpfull and wellbuilt.
I've all of them and I think next one will be this one :p
#2 nedy said on the 2010/05/24 at 12:43

Thanks Fabien.
I am definitely one of those "some people" for whom the definitive guide is best suited. :)
Keep up your good work.
#3 Raphael said on the 2010/05/24 at 14:01

Wow, once again great stuff!
Nice to see as well that François seems to be back with symfony & Symfony in some way or another.
Thanks! R+
#4 Frank said on the 2010/05/24 at 14:17

Great work! I love the definite guide because i find things much faster there. I still used it for 1.4 projects in some parts.
Thanks to the new chapters of the gentle introducation the development will get even faster :)
Thank you!
#5 annis said on the 2010/05/24 at 14:41

Thank you, Fabien! And that François is back is also really great (they even worked together on the PropelBundle for Symfony2!). :)

Daniel
#6 Pablo Godel said on the 2010/05/24 at 15:42

I missed this book in the 1.3/1.4 series!

Thank you Fabien for your efforts, it is much appreciated.
#7 Jonathan Nieto said on the 2010/05/24 at 15:56

Thanks for all your efforts.

I'm very glad to see that François is working in Symfony again!

Regards!
#8 Rich said on the 2010/05/24 at 18:02

unfortunately Francais isn't back as far as i know - he just wrote this chapter on his blog two years ago and was take from there...
i wish Francais back on the team - definitely could help with docs...
#9 xplo said on the 2010/05/24 at 23:49

awesome, for me this is the best documentation of symfony especially with the form/mail chapters updated, no more random searching for doc.
As for Francois he s indirectly working with symfony in managing propel 1.x + sfPropelPlugin which is one of the reason i stick to propel ~
Thanks
#10 east3rd said on the 2010/05/25 at 02:42

Fantastic news! This really fills a void!
#11 Chris said on the 2010/05/25 at 10:19

Great News. I've been missing this book ever since i upgraded my projects to sf 1.4.
#12 Sebastian said on the 2010/05/25 at 13:37

It's great to finally have an updated "full" documentation!

What happened to the PDF version?
#13 z01d said on the 2010/05/25 at 14:05

A joyful day! Been waiting for this for loong time...
It is only now that I will switch from 1.0. My copy of the book is on the way.
#14 east3rd said on the 2010/05/25 at 23:41

I'm optimistic, but the first thing I looked up wasn't in there-- the "new" routing features-- sfObjectRouteCollection. Yes, this is covered in the reference guide, but it would be so nice to just have one go-to book!
#15 Fabian Barrera said on the 2010/05/28 at 02:12

So many thanks. The Practical Guide is an excellent resource to learn by practice, but when you want to find something in particular it's not really good. I really appreciate it.
#16 Ehsan said on the 2010/05/31 at 02:17

Hi
where is PDF version ?
i prefer to read in ebook reader or printed version.
Thank you for your greate work
#17 rediguana said on the 2010/06/02 at 00:28

Likewise, I'm looking for a PDF version that I can install and read on my iPad - is there a PDF version available for download?
#18 atik said on the 2010/06/14 at 12:10

Here is the pdf version-

http://www.symfony-project.org/get/pdf/gentle-introduction-1.4-en.pdf