Get Symfony Installed in 20 Minutes on Vista

Interest in Symfony has increased since del.icio.us announced it developed its new version on the Symfony framework. If you are running Vista and you need to get a quick Symfony development environment going, then look no further. Follow these easy steps to going in 20 minutes.

1. Install XAMPP

Just follow the instructions for installation and then:

1. During the install, specify XAMPP to be installed under C:\Program Files because of Vista security restraints.
2. Run http://127.0.0.1/security/index.php to secure XAMPP.

2. Install Symfony

1. Press the Win key
2. Type cmd
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
4. Confirm the elevation prompt
5. cd “C:\Program Files\xampp\php”
6. pear upgrade PEAR
   1. Note: You will get a pop-up with “CLI has stopped working”, you can safely close that (this will happen during the other command prompt steps as well).
7. pear channel-discover pear.symfony-project.com
8. pear install symfony/symfony
9. pear install phing/phing

3. Setup Your Application

Add symfony to your path:

1. Start Orb -> Computer (right click and choose properties)
2. Advanced system settings
3. Environment Variables…
4. Click on the Path System variable and click edit
5. At the end of the string, append ;C:\Program Files\xampp\php;C:\Program Files\xampp\mysql\bin

Restart the command prompt for the path variable to set.

Set up a sample project:

1. cd [path to your workspace]
2. mkdir myproject
3. cd myproject
4. symfony init-project myproject
5. symfony init-app myapp

4. Configure the Web Server

Set up a named host:

1. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc in explorer and right click on the host file. Uncheck the read only box.
2. Hit the windows key
3. Type notepad.exe
4. Cntrl+Shift+Enter
5. File -> Open
6. Open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc (you will have to put an * in the file name box to see the file) and open the hosts file
7. Add “127.0.0.1 myproject” under “127.0.0.1 localhost” (without the quotes)
8. Save
9. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc in explorer and right click on the host file. Check the read only box.
10. File -> Open
11. C:\Program Files\xampp\apache\conf\extra (you will have to put an * in the file name box to see the file) and open httpd-vhosts.conf
12. Add this to the end of the httpd-vhosts.conf file and save:
    <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName myproject
    DocumentRoot “C:\[path to your workspace]\myproject\web”
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    Alias /sf C:\php5\pear\data\symfony\web\sf
    <Directory “C:\php5\pear\data\symfony\web\sf”>
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
    </Directory>
    <Directory “C:\[path to your workspace]\myproject\web”>
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
    </Directory>
    </VirtualHost>
13. Uncomment ##NameVirtualHost *:80 if you want to have more than one project able to run with different names.
14. Restart Apache and go to http://myproject/ and you should see the symfony default project page.

5. Setup File Folder Permissions

Now you need to allow for write access to the cache and log folder.

1. Traverse to each those two directories seperately within your newly Symfony file structure with Explorer.
2. Right click on each of the folders and choose properties
3. Go to the security tab and choose the user that will be granted the permissions and click edit.
   1. Note: You can find out the user by Cntrl+Alt+Delete, and then starting the task manager. Note the User Name.
4. Allow that person to have full control.

NEXT STEPS

I suggest you install Aptana or PHPEclipse for your IDE.

You will also want to setup TortoiseSVN or use SVN from inside Cygwin for a version control client.

The Askeet tutorial is a good way to learn about programming in Symfony.

If you prefer learning on paper, I suggest you check out the official Symfony book: The Definitive Guide to symfony (Definitive Guide). Or read it online free here.