How to configure a web server

Overview

There is more than one way to configure a web server to enable it to access symfony applications. This chapter illustrates the different configuration possibilities and some tricks to optimize your access.

Introduction

In the examples described above, the myproject project contains a myapp application. The front controller of this application is called index.php and lies in /home/steve/myproject/web/. The symfony data directory is $data_dir.

Virtual host

Virtual hosting allows you to setup your web server so that your symfony application appears at the root of a domain (or a sub domain):

http://myapp.example.com/

Let's assume that you run an Apache server. To setup a virtual host for the myapp application, add the following lines to the httpd.conf file:

<Directory "/$data_dir/symfony/web/sf">
 AllowOverride All
 Allow from All
</Directory>
<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName myapp.example.com
  DocumentRoot "/home/steve/myproject/web"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Alias /sf /$data_dir/symfony/web/sf

  <Directory "/home/steve/myproject/web">
   AllowOverride All
   Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

The Alias statement in the middle is necessary for the images of the debug sidebar to be displayed. The $data_dir placeholders has to be replaced by your PEAR data directory. For example, for *nix, you should type:

Alias /sf /usr/local/lib/php/data/symfony/web/sf

You will find more about the PEAR directories in the installation chapter.

Restart Apache, and that's it: the webapp can now be called and viewed through a standard web browser at the URL:

http://myapp.example.com/

or, in debug mode:

http://myapp.example.com/myapp_dev.php/

URL rewriting

By default, the web server is configured to avoid mentioning the production front controller (index.php) in the URL. This means that instead of displaying:

http://myapp.example.com/index.php/

your server displays and recognizes:

http://myapp.example.com/

This uses the mod_rewrite Apache module, and requires the following lines to be present in the myproject/web/.htaccess (which is the case by default):

# all files with .something are skipped
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \..+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.html$
RewriteRule .* - [L]
# the others are redirected to the front web controller
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

There is one more cosmetic addition that you may wish to add to your URLs : a .html at the end. Normally, when calling the index action of the main module, with default routing configuration, the URL displayed would be:

http://myapp.example.com/main/index

The default settings.yml of the application contains a commented suffix parameter:

all:
#  .settings:
#    suffix:        .

In order to make the index action of the main module appear like:

http://myapp.example.com/main/index.html

You can uncomment and set the suffix parameter to .html:

all:
  .settings:
    suffix:        .html

Alias

If you already have a website on a domain name, and if you wish that your symfony application can be accessed within this domain, then the virtual host solution cannot work. For instance, let's assume that you want to access our symfony application with:

http://www.example.com/myapp/

To do that, open the httpd.conf and add the following lines:

Alias /myapp/ /home/steve/myproject/web/
<Directory "/home/steve/myproject/web">
   AllowOverride All
   Allow from All
</Directory>

You also need to edit the .htaccess file located in your myproject/web/ directory and change the last rewrite rule from

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

to

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /myapp/index.php [QSA,L]

Restart Apache, and try to access your webapp:

http://www.example.com/myapp/

Multiple applications within one project

During the course of project design, you will meet one day or another the problem of multiple applications access. For instance, in our myproject project, you might have a myapp application for the public and an admin application o manage the content (usually called a back-office). How to authorize access to multiple applications within one project ?

Virtual hosts

You can add a new virtual host in your Apache httpd.conf That's fairly easy to understand:

<Directory "/$data_dir/symfony/web/sf">
 AllowOverride All
 Allow from All
</Directory>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName myapp.example.com
  DocumentRoot "/home/steve/myproject/web"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Alias /sf /$data_dir/symfony/web/sf

  <Directory "/home/steve/myproject/web">
   AllowOverride All
   Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName admin.example.com
  DocumentRoot "/home/steve/myproject/web"
  DirectoryIndex admin.php
  Alias /sf /$data_dir/symfony/web/sf

  <Directory "/home/steve/myproject/web">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Aliases

Alternatively, you can add a new alias. This will allow you to have separated web contents (.css, .js, images, etc.) for each application. This also avoids direct modification of the httpd.conf file.

First, create a new directory in your web directory:

$ mkdir /home/steve/myproject/web/admin

Then, move the front controllers of the admin application to this new directory, and copy the .htaccess to have one for this new app:

$ cd /home/steve/myproject/web
$ mv admin.php admin/index.php
$ mv admin_dev.php admin/
$ cp .htaccess admin/

Then, execute the two last steps steps described above to setup the alias. Edit the .htaccess file located in your myproject/web/admin/ directory and change

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [QSA,L]

to

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /admin/index.php [QSA,L]

Eventually, edit both front controllers (myproject/web/admin/index.php and myproject/web/admin/admin_dev.php) and change:

define('SF_ROOT_DIR', realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/..'));

to:

define('SF_ROOT_DIR', realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../..'));

And this is enough to be able to access the admin application by:

http://whateveryourmainurlis/admin/

IIS

Symfony is compatible with IIS. To learn all about the installation and configuration of a symfony project in a IIS environment, read the related tutorial.