Installing and Configuring Symfony
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Installing and Configuring Symfony
The goal of this chapter is to get you up and running with a working application built on top of Symfony. In order to simplify the process of creating new applications, Symfony provides an installer application.
Installing the Symfony Installer
Using the Symfony Installer is the only recommended way to create new Symfony applications. This installer is a PHP application that has to be installed in your system only once and then it can create any number of Symfony applications.
Note
The installer requires PHP 5.4 or higher. If you still use the legacy PHP 5.3 version, you cannot use the Symfony Installer. Read the Installing and Configuring Symfony section to learn how to proceed.
Depending on your operating system, the installer must be installed in different ways.
Linux and Mac OS X Systems
Open your command console and execute the following commands:
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$ sudo curl -LsS https://symfony.com/installer -o /usr/local/bin/symfony
$ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/symfony
This will create a global symfony
command in your system.
Windows Systems
Open your command console and execute the following command:
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c:\> php -r "readfile('https://symfony.com/installer');" > symfony
Then, move the downloaded symfony
file to your project's directory and
execute it as follows:
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c:\> move symfony c:\projects
c:\projects\> php symfony
Creating the Symfony Application
Once the Symfony Installer is available, create your first Symfony application
with the new
command:
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# Linux, Mac OS X
$ symfony new my_project_name
# Windows
c:\> cd projects/
c:\projects\> php symfony new my_project_name
This command creates a new directory called my_project_name
that contains a
fresh new project based on the most recent stable Symfony version available. In
addition, the installer checks if your system meets the technical requirements
to execute Symfony applications. If not, you'll see the list of changes needed
to meet those requirements.
Tip
For security reasons, all Symfony versions are digitally signed before distributing them. If you want to verify the integrity of any Symfony version, follow the steps explained in this post.
Note
If the installer doesn't work for you or doesn't output anything, make sure that the Phar extension is installed and enabled on your computer.
Basing your Project on a Specific Symfony Version
In case your project needs to be based on a specific Symfony version, use the
optional second argument of the new
command:
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# use the most recent version in any Symfony branch
$ symfony new my_project_name 2.3
$ symfony new my_project_name 2.5
$ symfony new my_project_name 2.6
# use a specific Symfony version
$ symfony new my_project_name 2.3.26
$ symfony new my_project_name 2.6.5
# use a beta or RC version (useful for testing new Symfony versions)
$ symfony new my_project 2.7.0-BETA1
$ symfony new my_project 2.7.0-RC1
The installer also supports a special version called lts
which installs the
most recent Symfony LTS version available:
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$ symfony new my_project_name lts
Read the Symfony Release process to better understand why there are several Symfony versions and which one to use for your projects.
Creating Symfony Applications without the Installer
If you still use PHP 5.3, or if you can't execute the installer for any reason, you can create Symfony applications using the alternative installation method based on Composer.
Composer is the dependency manager used by modern PHP applications and it can also be used to create new applications based on the Symfony Framework. If you don't have it installed globally, start by reading the next section.
Creating a Symfony Application with Composer
Once Composer is installed on your computer, execute the create-project
command to create a new Symfony application based on its latest stable version:
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$ composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition my_project_name
If you need to base your application on a specific Symfony version, provide that
version as the second argument of the create-project
command:
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$ composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition my_project_name "2.3.*"
Tip
If your Internet connection is slow, you may think that Composer is not
doing anything. If that's your case, add the -vvv
flag to the previous
command to display a detailed output of everything that Composer is doing.
Running the Symfony Application
Symfony leverages the internal web server provided by PHP to run applications while developing them. Therefore, running a Symfony application is a matter of browsing the project directory and executing this command:
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$ cd my_project_name/
$ php app/console server:run
Then, open your browser and access the http://localhost:8000/
URL to see the
Welcome Page of Symfony:

Instead of the Welcome Page, you may see a blank page or an error page. This is caused by a directory permission misconfiguration. There are several possible solutions depending on your operating system. All of them are explained in the Setting up Permissions section.
Note
PHP's internal web server is available in PHP 5.4 or higher versions. If you still use the legacy PHP 5.3 version, you'll have to configure a virtual host in your web server.
The server:run
command is only suitable while developing the application. In
order to run Symfony applications on production servers, you'll have to configure
your Apache or Nginx web server as explained in
Configuring a Web Server.
When you are finished working on your Symfony application, you can stop the server by pressing `Ctrl+C` from terminal.
Checking Symfony Application Configuration and Setup
Symfony applications come with a visual server configuration tester to show if your environment is ready to use Symfony. Access the following URL to check your configuration:
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http://localhost:8000/config.php
If there are any issues, correct them now before moving on.
Setting up Permissions
One common issue when installing Symfony is that the app/cache
and
app/logs
directories must be writable both by the web server and the
command line user. On a UNIX system, if your web server user is different
from your command line user, you can try one of the following solutions.
1. Use the same user for the CLI and the web server
In development environments, it is a common practice to use the same UNIX
user for the CLI and the web server because it avoids any of these permissions
issues when setting up new projects. This can be done by editing your web server
configuration (e.g. commonly httpd.conf or apache2.conf for Apache) and setting
its user to be the same as your CLI user (e.g. for Apache, update the User
and Group
values).
Caution
If used in a production environment, be sure this user only has limited privileges (no access to private data or servers, launch of unsafe binaries, etc.) as a compromised server would give to the hacker those privileges.
2. Using ACL on a system that supports chmod +a (MacOS X)
MacOS X allows you to use the chmod +a
command. This uses a command to
try to determine your web server user and set it as HTTPDUSER
:
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$ rm -rf app/cache/*
$ rm -rf app/logs/*
$ HTTPDUSER=`ps axo user,comm | grep -E '[a]pache|[h]ttpd|[_]www|[w]ww-data|[n]ginx' | grep -v root | head -1 | cut -d\ -f1`
$ sudo chmod +a "$HTTPDUSER allow delete,write,append,file_inherit,directory_inherit" app/cache app/logs
$ sudo chmod +a "`whoami` allow delete,write,append,file_inherit,directory_inherit" app/cache app/logs
3. Using ACL on a system that supports setfacl (most Linux/BSD)
Most Linux and BSD distributions don't support chmod +a
, but do support
another utility called setfacl
. You may need to enable ACL support
on your partition and install setfacl before using it. This uses a command
to try to determine your web server user and set it as HTTPDUSER
:
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$ HTTPDUSER=`ps axo user,comm | grep -E '[a]pache|[h]ttpd|[_]www|[w]ww-data|[n]ginx' | grep -v root | head -1 | cut -d\ -f1`
$ sudo setfacl -R -m u:"$HTTPDUSER":rwX -m u:`whoami`:rwX app/cache app/logs
$ sudo setfacl -dR -m u:"$HTTPDUSER":rwX -m u:`whoami`:rwX app/cache app/logs
If this doesn't work, try adding -n
option.
Note
setfacl isn't available on NFS mount points. However, setting cache and logs over NFS is strongly not recommended for performance.
4. Without using ACL
If none of the previous methods work for you, change the umask so that the
cache and log directories will be group-writable or world-writable (depending
if the web server user and the command line user are in the same group or not).
To achieve this, put the following line at the beginning of the app/console
,
web/app.php
and web/app_dev.php
files:
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umask(0002); // This will let the permissions be 0775
// or
umask(0000); // This will let the permissions be 0777
Note that using the ACL is recommended when you have access to them on your server because changing the umask is not thread-safe.
Updating Symfony Applications
At this point, you've created a fully-functional Symfony application in which
you'll start to develop your own project. A Symfony application depends on
a number of external libraries. These are downloaded into the vendor/
directory
and they are managed exclusively by Composer.
Updating those third-party libraries frequently is a good practice to prevent bugs
and security vulnerabilities. Execute the update
Composer command to update
them all at once:
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$ cd my_project_name/
$ composer update
Depending on the complexity of your project, this update process can take up to several minutes to complete.
Installing the Symfony Demo Application
The Symfony Demo application is a fully-functional application that shows the recommended way to develop Symfony applications. The application has been conceived as a learning tool for Symfony newcomers and its source code contains tons of comments and helpful notes.
In order to download the Symfony Demo application, execute the demo
command
of the Symfony Installer anywhere in your system:
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# Linux, Mac OS X
$ symfony demo
# Windows
c:\projects\> php symfony demo
Once downloaded, enter into the symfony_demo/
directory and run the PHP's
built-in web server executing the php app/console server:run
command. Access
to the http://localhost:8000
URL in your browser to start using the Symfony
Demo application.
Installing a Symfony Distribution
Symfony project packages "distributions", which are fully-functional applications that include the Symfony core libraries, a selection of useful bundles, a sensible directory structure and some default configuration. In fact, when you created a Symfony application in the previous sections, you actually downloaded the default distribution provided by Symfony, which is called Symfony Standard Edition.
The Symfony Standard Edition is by far the most popular distribution and it's also the best choice for developers starting with Symfony. However, the Symfony Community has published other popular distributions that you may use in your applications:
- The Symfony CMF Standard Edition is the best distribution to get started with the Symfony CMF project, which is a project that makes it easier for developers to add CMS functionality to applications built with the Symfony Framework.
- The Symfony REST Edition shows how to build an application that provides a RESTful API using the FOSRestBundle and several other related bundles.
Using Source Control
If you're using a version control system like Git, you can safely commit all
your project's code. The reason is that Symfony applications already contain a
.gitignore
file specially prepared for Symfony.
For specific instructions on how best to set up your project to be stored in Git, see How to Create and Store a Symfony Project in Git.
Checking out a versioned Symfony Application
When using Composer to manage application's dependencies, it's recommended to
ignore the entire vendor/
directory before committing its code to the
repository. This means that when checking out a Symfony application from a Git
repository, there will be no vendor/
directory and the application won't
work out-of-the-box.
In order to make it work, check out the Symfony application and then execute the
install
Composer command to download and install all the dependencies required
by the application:
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$ cd my_project_name/
$ composer install
How does Composer know which specific dependencies to install? Because when a
Symfony application is committed to a repository, the composer.json
and
composer.lock
files are also committed. These files tell Composer which
dependencies (and which specific versions) to install for the application.
Beginning Development
Now that you have a fully-functional Symfony application, you can begin
development! Your distribution may contain some sample code - check the
README.md
file included with the distribution (open it as a text file)
to learn about what sample code was included with your distribution.
If you're new to Symfony, check out "Create your First Page in Symfony", where you'll learn how to create pages, change configuration, and do everything else you'll need in your new application.
Be sure to also check out the Cookbook, which contains a wide variety of articles about solving specific problems with Symfony.