As the first beta version of symfony 1.2 is about to be released (expect some more information from Fabian Lange, the release manager of 1.2, really soon now), I want to have a look at the current state of the documentation for this new version and what must be done before the final release.
The symfony blog
During the development of symfony 1.2, we have tried to publish a lot of blog posts about the new features, small and big. You can read useful information about the new REST architecture or about the new admin generator.
We have also posted several posts about small things that simplify the developer life and make symfony easier to use with each new version.
You can expect more blog posts like those in the coming weeks. Some of the tutorials we have published on the symfony blog have also been added to the cookbook.
The cookbook
We have more than doubled the number of tutorials in the cookbook between symfony 1.0 and 1.2, with a total of 24 tutorials.
The following tutorials have been added for symfony 1.2:
- How to unit testing your models
- How to customize the Web Debug Toolbar
- How to implement a conditional validator
- How to customize Error Templates
- How to implement a choice in a form
- How to test an application
- How to get started with Doctrine
Getting started
As for symfony 1.1, you can read the upgrade instructions for symfony 1.2. This tutorial contains everything you need to know for upgrading your symfony projects.
We have also written a What's new? tutorial where existing users of symfony will find all the new features explained. So, instead of re-reading the whole symfony book trying to spot new things, you can just read this tutorial and you will learn all the enhancements and new features at your disposal in symfony 1.2.
We have also updated the first tutorial for symfony 1.1. For symfony 1.2, we still need to update it to take into account the changes we have made to the new admin generator.
The book
Speaking of work that still need to be done, the symfony book has not been updated yet, except for the chapter about the new admin generator.
We were waiting for the final set of features to start updating the book. Just after the release of the first beta, we will start the update process, which will be quite easy as everything has already been documented in the What's new tutorial.
Translations
The community has also made a lot of efforts on the translation side of things. Some new tutorials have already been translated in several languages. If you want to help, please subscribe to the symfony docs mailing-list.
The new admin generator also comes with built-in translations in more than 21 languages.
We have never been so active on the symfony documentation, and I really hope you will enjoy what we have already published. That's already a lot, but there is still some work to be done, so, expect more to come in the coming weeks.
Hi can't wait for 1.2 :) I wanted to start developing some projects in 1.1 but I think I'll just wait for 1.2 :) ..
thanks for great work
will there be a printed book for 1.2 ?
Symfony 1.2 is showing a lot of promise from the changes it has implemented. I am impressed even though I am playing with the SVN version.
I actually found the new Forms to be more organized and cleaner; widgets and validator classes seem to make a lot of sense.... and the generate forms task makes it quite easy to jump in on it. I feel that playing with forms feels very similar to playing with models. If YAML is going away for things like Forms, I for one is ok with that as I had tried to maintain my sanity trying to read a large YAML file back in 1.0 and learning YAML actually became an issue. It is much faster for PHP programmers to pick up the sfForms thingy.
Only one area that I hope will improve on soon is the availability of old plugins like the sfPagerNavigation on 1.2 and updated documentation (I am not able to get the sfFormExtraPlugin to work completely yet). Also if only things like sfPropelFinder makes it as a core module.... this is a wonderful plugin to use especially for those who are more comfortable working with SQL statements.
It seems the PropelFinder has been superceeded by DbFinder. Unfortunately the latest version does not support Symfony 1.2