Installing and Configuring Symfony2 on Windows

Overview

Notes and instructions on installing Symfony2 on Windows, including notes and instructions on setting up a new project.

Prerequisites

See Symfony: Requirements for Running Symfony2

• Composer, a dependency management library for PHP
  • Can be installed anywhere on the local computer.
  • littledamienii: c:/Composer
  • Using Composer:

    > php composer.phar

Creating a new project

See Symfony Documentation: Installing and Configuring Symfony

Download Symfony distribution

> php composer.phar create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition /path/to/webroot/Symfony/ 2.3.4

• php composer.phar
  • Use Composer to download and install.
  • If composer.phar cannot be located use php c:\Composer\composer.phar
• create-project "Create project" parameter.
• symfony/framework-standard-edition
  • Symfony distribution to install.
  • TODO: Investigate options and determine best one. Esp. standard distribution vs. distribution without vendors.
• /path/to/webroot/Symfony/
  • Location of the Symfony project.
  • E.g. ./develop/littledamien/newproject/
  • TODO: A directory named web is installed below Symfony/ or newproject/. This is where requests are routed. All other files and directories should be non-public. Figure out the best naming convention for the project root directory, and where on the staging and production servers it should be located relative to public directories.
• 2.3.4 The version of Symfony to install.

Create a new site in IIS

• The root directory of the site is [drive]:[\base\path\]newproject\web\

Test the new installation

• http://newproject.dbarchowsky.com/config.php
  • This will list recommendations to create an optimal environment for Symfony.
  • It's necessary to add the static IP of the gateway to the list of allowed IP address in web/config.php.
• If not connecting to the site using http://localhost, edit web/app_dev.php to add the remote address to the list of allowed addresses.
• In a browser go to http://newproject.dbarchowsky.com/app_dev.php.
• A welcome page should load. If it does, the site is ready for development.
• See also, removing sample scripts from the distribution.

Dev environment

TODO: research and document loading the dev environment vs. the production environment.

For example, there are two "app" files: web/app.php and web/app_dev.php. The demo script isn't accessible when using app.php.

What is the recommended method for switching between the two? I hacked the .htaccess file to replace all instances of app.php with app_dev.php and this allowed the demo to be loaded, whereas before it was generating a 404 error. But this can't be the right way of doing it.

See also

• Symfony Documentation: Installing and Configuring Symfony
• Symfony: Requirements for Running Symfony2
• Kev Web Dev: Installing PHP 5.4 on Windows 7 for Developing With Symfony2