Installation¶

The Symfony server is distributed as a free installable binary and has support for Linux, macOS and Windows. Go to symfony.com/download and follow the instructions for your operating system.

Getting Started¶

The Symfony server is started once per project, so you may end up with several instances (each of them listening to a different port). This is the common workflow to serve a Symfony project:

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$ cd my-project/
$ symfony server:start

  [OK] Web server listening on http://127.0.0.1:....
  ...

# Now, browse the given URL, or run this command:
$ symfony open:local

Running the server this way makes it display the log messages in the console, so you won’t be able to run other commands at the same time. If you prefer, you can run the Symfony server in the background:

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$ cd my-project/

# start the server in the background
$ symfony server:start -d

# continue working and running other commands...

# show the latest log messages
$ symfony server:log

Enabling TLS¶

Browsing the secure version of your applications locally is important to detect problems with mixed content early, and to run libraries that only run in HTTPS. Traditionally this has been painful and complicated to set up, but the Symfony server automates everything. First, run this command:

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$ symfony server:ca:install

This command creates a local certificate authority, registers it in your system trust store, registers it in Firefox (this is required only for that browser) and creates a default certificate for localhost and 127.0.0.1. In other words, it does everything for you.

Before browsing your local application with HTTPS instead of HTTP, restart its server stopping and starting it again.

Different PHP Settings Per Project¶

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$ cd my-project/

# use a specific PHP version
$ echo "7.2" > .php-version

# use any PHP 7.x version available
$ echo "7" > .php-version

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$ symfony local:php:list

  # You'll see all supported SAPIs (CGI, FastCGI, etc.) for each version.
  # FastCGI (php-fpm) is used when possible; then CGI (which acts as a FastCGI
  # server as well), and finally, the server falls back to plain CGI.

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$ cd my-project/

# this project only overrides the default PHP timezone
$ cat php.ini
[Date]
date.timezone = Asia/Tokyo

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# runs the command with the default PHP version
$ php -r "..."

# runs the command with the PHP version selected by the project
# (or the default PHP version if the project didn't select one)
$ symfony php -r "..."

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$ cd ~/.symfony/bin
$ cp symfony php
# now you can run "php ..." and the "symfony" command will be executed instead

# other PHP commands can be wrapped too using this trick
$ cp symfony php-config
$ cp symfony pear
$ cp symfony pecl

Local Domain Names¶

By default, projects are accessible at some random port of the 127.0.0.1 local IP. However, sometimes it is preferable to associate a domain name to them:

• It’s more convenient when you work continuously on the same project because port numbers can change but domains don’t;
• The behavior of some applications depend on their domains/subdomains;
• To have stable endpoints, such as the local redirection URL for Oauth2.

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$ symfony proxy:start

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$ cd my-project/
$ symfony proxy:domain:attach my-domain

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$ HTTPS_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:7080 curl https://my-domain.wip

Long-Running Commands¶

Long-running commands, such as the ones that compile front-end web assets, block the terminal and you can’t run other commands at the same time. The Symfony server provides a run command to wrap them as follows:

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# compile Webpack assets using Symfony Encore ... but do that in the
# background to not block the terminal
$ symfony run -d yarn encore dev --watch

# continue working and running other commands...

# from time to time, check the command logs if you want
$ symfony server:log

# and you can also check if the command is still running
$ symfony server:status
Web server listening on ...
Command "yarn ..." running with PID ...

# stop the web server (and all the associated commands) when you are finished
$ symfony server:stop

Docker Integration¶

The local Symfony server provides full Docker integration for projects that use it. First, make sure to expose the container ports:

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# docker-compose.override.yaml
services:
    database:
        ports:
            - "3306"

    redis:
        ports:
            - "6379"

    # ...

Then, check your service names and update them if needed (Symfony creates environment variables following the name of the services so they can be autoconfigured):

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# docker-compose.yaml
services:
    # DATABASE_URL
    database: ...
    # MONGODB_DATABASE, MONGODB_SERVER
    mongodb: ...
    # REDIS_URL
    redis: ...
    # ELASTISEARCH_HOST, ELASTICSEARCH_PORT
    elasticsearch: ...
    # RABBITMQ_DSN
    rabbitmq: ...

If your docker-compose.yaml file doesn’t use the environment variable names expected by Symfony (e.g. you use MYSQL_URL instead of DATABASE_URL) then you need to rename all occurrences of those environment variables in your Symfony application. A simpler alternative is to use the .env.local file to reassign the environment variables:

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# .env.local
DATABASE_URL=${MYSQL_URL}
# ...

Now you can start the containers and all their services will be exposed. Browse any page of your application and check the “Symfony Server” section in the web debug toolbar. You’ll see that “Docker Compose” is “Up”.

SymfonyCloud Integration¶

The local Symfony server provides full, but optional, integration with SymfonyCloud, a service optimized to run your Symfony applications on the cloud. It provides features such as creating environments, backups/snapshots, and even access to a copy of the production data from your local machine to help debug any issues.

Read SymfonyCloud technical docs.

Bonus Features¶

In addition to being a local web server, the Symfony server provides other useful features:

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$ symfony security:check

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# creates a new project based on symfony/skeleton
$ symfony new my_project_name

# creates a new project based on symfony/website-skeleton
$ symfony new --full my_project_name

# creates a new project based on the Symfony Demo application
$ symfony new --demo my_project_name

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# creates a new project based on Symfony's master branch
$ symfony new --version=dev-master my_project_name

# creates a new project based on Symfony's 4.3 dev branch
$ symfony new --version=4.3.x-dev my_project_name