Yet another framework: Symfony
The Farm mentions a new PHP framework: Symfony, which is described as the Ruby on Rails for PHP. I haven't actually played with it myself, but I did have a quick look at the ten minutes screencast and a ajax tutorial.
It seems fairly simple to me, although it's a shame that it needs to be installed on your server. That'll stop most people, including me, from actually being to use it on a production website. I'm on shared hosting, so I won't be able to install the framework. The same thing goes for Ruby on Rails.
It does boast a very extensive list of features, including:
- simple templating and helpers
- cache management
- multiple environments support
- deployment management
- scaffolding
- smart URLs
- multilingual and I18N support
- object model and MVC separation
- Ajax support
which makes it even more of a shame that I can't run it on my web host. Check out the live demo as well, where you can use an app created with Symfony. Seems pretty neat, doesn't it?
November 30th, 2005 at 8:03 am
well, the thing with Ruby on Rails is that its one standard package & all of the Ruby hosts have it installed. However, Symfony is not as synonymous to PHP development as is Rails to Ruby. Besides, Symfony requires PHP5 which still not a lot of hosts offer!!
December 3rd, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Hi,
I’m one of the guys working on symfony. You can totally use it in a shared server without needing the command line: checkout the installation chapter of the documentation (http://www.symfony-project.com/content/book/page/installation.html), the ‘installing symfony without a command line’ section.
We did it a couple of times, it works fine. So the only thing you need is a host providing PHP5, which more and more providers offer.
April 13th, 2006 at 5:38 am
Yes, Francois is right saying that more and more providers offer PHP5. I’m working on a new project, so I’ve been looking for PHP5 hosting, so I know that there are more and more of them.
I just been learning Symfony for less than a week and I can say that it is very easy to learn and has very good documentations. I love the code/skeleton generator, Propel integration (which mean I can use visual ER diagraming tool like DBDesigner), easy installation (yes, it’s very easy!).