Symfony Installation

Initializing the Project Directory

Before installing symfony, you first need to create a directory that will host all the files related to your project:

$ mkdir -p /home/sfproject
$ cd /home/sfproject

Or on Windows:

c:\> mkdir c:\dev\sfproject
c:\> cd c:\dev\sfproject

Choosing the Symfony Version

Now, you need to install symfony. As the symfony framework has several stable versions, you need to choose the one you want to install by reading the installation page on the symfony website.

This tutorial assumes you want to install symfony 1.3.

Choosing the Symfony Installation Location

You can install symfony globally on your machine, or embed it into each of your project. The latter is the recommended one as projects will then be totally independent from each others. Upgrading your locally installed symfony won't break some of your projects unexpectedly. It means you will be able to have projects on different versions of symfony, and upgrade them one at a time as you see fit.

As a best practice, many people install the symfony framework files in the lib/vendor project directory. So, first, create this directory:

$ mkdir -p lib/vendor

Installing Symfony

Installing from an archive

The easiest way to install symfony is to download the archive for the version you choose from the symfony website. Go to the installation page for the version you have just chosen, symfony 1.3 for instance.

Under the "Source Download" section, you will find the archive in .tgz or in .zip format. Download the archive, put it under the freshly created lib/vendor/ directory, un-archive it, and rename the directory to symfony:

$ cd lib/vendor
$ tar zxpf symfony-1.3.0.tgz
$ mv symfony-1.3.0 symfony
$ rm symfony-1.3.0.tgz

Under Windows, unzipping the zip file can be achieved using Windows Explorer. After you rename the directory to symfony, there should be a directory structure similar to c:\dev\sfproject\lib\vendor\symfony.

Installing from Subversion (recommended)

If you use Subversion, it is even better to use the svn:externals property to embed symfony into your project in the lib/vendor/ directory:

$ svn pe svn:externals lib/vendor/

If everything goes well, this command will run your favorite editor to give you the opportunity to configure the external Subversion sources.

If you are conservative, tie your project to a specific release (a subversion tag):

symfony http://svn.symfony-project.com/tags/RELEASE_1_3_0

Whenever a new release comes out (as announced on the symfony blog), you will need to change the URL to the new version.

If you want to go the bleeding-edge route, use the 1.3 branch:

symfony http://svn.symfony-project.com/branches/1.3/

Using the branch makes your project benefits from the bug fixes automatically whenever you run a svn update.

Installation Verification

Now that symfony is installed, check that everything is working by using the symfony command line to display the symfony version (note the capital V):

$ cd ../..
$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony -V

On Windows:

c:\> cd ..\..
c:\> php lib\vendor\symfony\data\bin\symfony -V

The -V option also displays the path to the symfony installation directory, which is stored in config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php.

If the path to symfony is an absolute one (which should not be by default if you follow the above instructions), change it so it reads like follows for better portability:

// config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php
require_once dirname(__FILE__).'/../lib/vendor/symfony/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php';

That way, you can move the project directory anywhere on your machine or another one, and it will just work.

$ php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony

c:\> php lib\vendor\symfony\data\bin\symfony