We would like to wish you a very happy New Year 2007. With the upcoming of symfony 1.0 very soon, this will be a great year for the framework, and we hope that the current symfony community will continue to increase.

To start the year with good news, we'd like to talk about the progress of the paper book. The "Definitive Guide to Symfony", the famous book we've been working on for months now, is almost finished and will soon be sent to the printer. This guide is up to date with all the features of symfony 1.0. If you wonder what it will contain, here is a glance at its chapters:

PART 1: The Basics

  • CHAPTER 1 Introducing Symfony
  • CHAPTER 2 Exploring Symfony's Code
  • CHAPTER 3 Running Symfony
  • CHAPTER 4 The Basics of Page Creation
  • CHAPTER 5 Configuring Symfony

PART 2: The Core Architecture

  • CHAPTER 6 Inside the Controller Layer
  • CHAPTER 7 Inside the View Layer
  • CHAPTER 8 Inside the Model Layer

PART 3: Special Features

  • CHAPTER 9 Links and the Routing System
  • CHAPTER 10 Forms
  • CHAPTER 11 Ajax Integration
  • CHAPTER 12 Caching
  • CHAPTER 13 I18N and L10N

PART 4: Development Tools

  • CHAPTER 14 Generators
  • CHAPTER 15 Unit and Functional Testing
  • CHAPTER 16 Application Management Tools
  • CHAPTER 17 Extending Symfony

PART 5: Becoming a Symfony Expert

  • CHAPTER 18 Performance
  • CHAPTER 19 Mastering Symfony's Configuration Files

If you worry about filters, they are documented in Chapter 6. If you worry about lime, it's documented in Chapter 15. If you worry about anything else, well, it's also in the book ("definitive" says the title). We chose to fill the 450 pages with gray matter rather than blank space, and it took two authors, three editors, five versions, months of writing, and liters of sweat to write it. Expect a lot of tips and practical examples, clear explanations and completeness. It's the best way to learn the framework, it's much better written than the current documentation, and you will love it.

The "Definitive Guide to Symfony" will be released on schedule, between the end of January and the middle of February.

Oh, and there's one more thing. This book will be released under a GFDL license. It means that the symfony website will contain an HTML version of the book content, complete and free to read online. The online version will be released at the same time as the paper book. As a matter of fact, it will even become the official documentation and replace the main part of the current online book (the "symfony 101" and "developer tools" sections). However, if you want to read it all, you should definitely get the paper version, because reading 450 pages on a screen would turn your eyes into fireballs, and because buying the book is a good way to spend money in return for the big amount of work that was required to write it.

This might sound extreme, but that's the way we see open-source. We decided to donate this book to leverage the adoption of the framework, and because a good documentation is a key to an open-source project's success. Feel free to donate back if our initiative makes you happy (and rich).

And if you are not yet rich enough to buy the book, if you already know symfony and if you look for a job in France in a great company, join us.

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