Symfony CLI

Shell Autocompletion

The Symfony CLI supports autocompletion for Bash, Zsh, and Fish shells. This helps you type commands faster and discover available options:

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# install autocompletion (do this only once)
$ symfony completion bash | sudo tee /etc/bash_completion.d/symfony

# for Zsh users
$ symfony completion zsh > ~/.symfony_completion && echo "source ~/.symfony_completion" >> ~/.zshrc

# for Fish users
$ symfony completion fish | source

After installation, restart your terminal to enable autocompletion. The CLI will also provide autocompletion for composer and console commands when it detects a Symfony project.

Serving Your Application

To serve a Symfony project with the local server:

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$ cd my-project/
$ symfony server:start

  [OK] Web server listening on http://127.0.0.1:8000
  ...

Now browse the given URL or run the following command to open it in the browser:

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$ symfony open:local

The server:start command blocks the current terminal to output the server logs. To run the server in the background:

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$ symfony server:start -d

Now you can continue working in the terminal and run other commands:

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# view the latest log messages
$ symfony server:log

# stop the background server
$ symfony server:stop

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$ sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - $(whereis -q symfony)

Enabling PHP-FPM

When the server starts, it checks for web/index_dev.php, web/index.php, public/app_dev.php, public/app.php in that order. If one is found, the server will automatically start with PHP-FPM enabled. Otherwise the server will start without PHP-FPM and will show a Page not found page when trying to access a .php file in the browser.

Enabling HTTPS/TLS

Running your application over HTTPS locally helps detect mixed content issues early and allows using features that require secure connections. Traditionally, this has been painful and complicated to set up, but the Symfony server automates everything for you:

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# install the certificate authority (run this only once on your machine)
$ symfony server:ca:install

# now start (or restart) your server; it will use HTTPS automatically
$ symfony server:start

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$ explorer.exe `wslpath -w $HOME/.symfony5/certs`

Selecting PHP Version

If you have multiple PHP versions installed on your computer, you can tell Symfony which one to use creating a file called .php-version at the project root directory:

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$ cd my-project/

# use a specific PHP version
$ echo 8.2 > .php-version

# use any PHP 8.x version available
$ echo 8 > .php-version

To see all available PHP versions:

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$ symfony local:php:list

Custom PHP Configuration

Override PHP settings per project by creating a php.ini file at the project root:

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; php.ini
[Date]
date.timezone = Asia/Tokyo

[PHP]
memory_limit = 256M

Using PHP Commands

Use symfony php to ensure commands run with the correct PHP version:

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# runs with the system's default PHP
$ php -v

# runs with the project's PHP version
$ symfony php -v

# this also works for Composer
$ symfony composer install

Setting up the Local Proxy

The Symfony CLI includes a proxy that allows using custom local domains. The first time you use it, you must configure it as follows:

1. Open the proxy settings of your operating system:

   • Proxy settings in Windows;
   • Proxy settings in macOS;
   • Proxy settings in Ubuntu.

2. Set the following URL as the value of the Automatic Proxy Configuration:

   http://127.0.0.1:7080/proxy.pac

Now run this command to start the proxy:

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$ symfony proxy:start

If the proxy doesn't work as explained in the following sections, check the following:

• Some browsers (e.g. Chrome) require reapplying proxy settings (clicking on Re-apply settings button on the chrome://net-internals/#proxy page) or a full restart after starting the proxy. Otherwise, you'll see a "This webpage is not available" error (ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED);
• Some Operating Systems (e.g. macOS) don't apply proxy settings to local hosts and domains by default. You may need to remove *.local and/or other IP addresses from that list.
• Windows requires using localhost instead of 127.0.0.1 when configuring the automatic proxy, otherwise you won't be able to access your local domain from your browser running in Windows.

Defining the Local Domain

By default, Symfony uses .wip (for Work in Progress) as the local TLD for custom domains. You can define a local domain for your project as follows:

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

Your application is now available at https://my-app.wip

You can also use wildcards:

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$ symfony proxy:domain:attach "*.my-app"

This allows accessing subdomains like https://api.my-app.wip or https://admin.my-app.wip.

When running console commands, set the https_proxy environment variable to make custom domains work:

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# example with cURL
$ https_proxy=$(symfony proxy:url) curl https://my-domain.wip

# example with Blackfire and cURL
$ https_proxy=$(symfony proxy:url) blackfire curl https://my-domain.wip

# example with Cypress
$ https_proxy=$(symfony proxy:url) ./node_modules/bin/cypress open

Automatic Service Detection

With this compose.yaml:

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services:
    database:
        image: mysql:8
        ports: [3306]

The web server detects that a service exposing port 3306 is running for the project. It understands that this is a MySQL service and creates environment variables accordingly, using the service name (database) as a prefix:

• DATABASE_URL
• DATABASE_HOST
• DATABASE_PORT

Here is a list of supported services with their ports and default Symfony prefixes:

If the service is not supported, generic environment variables are set: PORT, IP, and HOST.

You can open web management interfaces for the services that expose them by clicking on the links in the "Server" section of the web debug toolbar or by running these commands:

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$ symfony open:local:webmail
$ symfony open:local:rabbitmq

When Docker services are running, browse a page of your Symfony application and check the "Symfony Server" section in the web debug toolbar. You'll see that "Docker Compose" is marked as "Up".

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# compose.yaml
services:
    db:
        ports: [3306]
        labels:
            com.symfony.server.service-ignore: true

If your Docker Compose file is not at the root of the project, use the COMPOSE_FILE and COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME environment variables to define its location, same as for docker-compose:

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# start your containers:
COMPOSE_FILE=docker/compose.yaml COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=project_name docker-compose up -d

# run any Symfony CLI command:
COMPOSE_FILE=docker/compose.yaml COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=project_name symfony var:export

Service Naming

If your service names don't match Symfony conventions, use labels:

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services:
    db:
        image: postgres:15
        ports: [5432]
        labels:
            com.symfony.server.service-prefix: 'DATABASE'

In this example, the service is named db, so environment variables would be prefixed with DB_, but as the com.symfony.server.service-prefix is set to DATABASE, the web server creates environment variables starting with DATABASE_ instead as expected by the default Symfony configuration.

Configuring Workers

Define processes that should start automatically with the server in .symfony.local.yaml:

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# .symfony.local.yaml
workers:
    # Built-in Encore integration
    npm_encore_watch: ~

    # Messenger consumer with file watching
    messenger_consume_async:
        cmd: ['symfony', 'console', 'messenger:consume', 'async']
        watch: ['config', 'src', 'templates', 'vendor']

    # Custom commands
    build_spa:
        cmd: ['npm', 'run', 'watch']

    # Auto-start Docker Compose
    docker_compose: ~