Development

Symfony, High-Performance PHP Framework for building API

Symfony, High-Performance PHP Framework for building API

Almost 30% of all sites over the Internet are written in PHP, and almost 2/3 of the total number of sites written in CMS; it is, quite literally, one of the most demanded and widely spread programming languages. PHP uses Facebook in its projects; WordPress is written on it. Thus as you can see, it is quite a demanded tool, and in order to facilitate and speed up the work with it, they have developed a number of frameworks, including Symfony.

So what is Symfony? It is the PHP framework, or in other words, the set of ready-made PHP components that can be used as building blocks to create your own applications. Symfony allows you to build large, complex, and scalable apps in less time compared to native PHP. It can be integrated with third-party solutions as well as some of the front end development tools. So, here we will take a quick look at the PHP Framework and the reasons making it so popular.

Benefits of a PHP framework

The main task of the PHP framework is to make the application development process quicker and easier. For example, in Symphony, one does not need to make a code for queries to databases, since this framework has already implemented the basic functions for working with them, you just need to take these code blocks and insert them into your code, that is, developers have to write less code. This is an easy and convenient solution! Moreover, such applications are scalable. Another significant advantage is the ease of supporting an already finished project. This framework makes the whole programming process much easier and faster than with native PHP. The framework code is simple and concise, so working with it will not be a problem if, at some moment, you decide to make some changes in it.

Symfony uses the MVC model; this greatly simplifies the code writing process. There is another significant advantage of Symfony – security (again, compared to native PHP).

This PHP framework is very popular among developers; it has come a long way from a fully integrated full-stack framework with a back-office (Symfony 1.x) to a framework that is based on the solutions of Java community programmers and contains components inspired by JEE in Symfony2.

What is this Symfony like?

As for the various supporting information, we can say that Symfony is great in that sense. Everything is well documented, these documents are regularly updated by community members, and this ecosystem continues to grow and develop.

Modularity is one of the most important features of working with Symfony. Just like other frameworks, this one contains a wide range of reusable and standalone components, called bundles. All the components in Symfony are bundles; that is everything; both components of the framework themselves and your application code are bundles. This architectural solution makes it possible to build an application very flexibly. Step by step, you build your project – brick by brick, so your application is no longer a monolithic wall, and in order to replace some modules, you do not need to destroy the entire structure. Moreover, the final configuration, of course, can be customized for your solution. Moreover, one can use individual Symfony components outside of it. This approach is successfully used by other projects, for example, Laravel, Drupal, Magento, and many others.

Here are some examples of some of the most popular bundles used in Symfony. Indeed, depending on the specifics, you may need other things, but these are really popular and demanded:

  • Debug and VarDumper components: provide improved control of the stack in case of an error and dump function as a replacement for var_dump;
  • Polyfill-* Components: Allows the application to use functions that are not available due to the PHP version or due to the lack of required PHP extensions;
  • Finder and Filesystem components: provide a convenient API for searching and manipulating folders and files;
  • Console component: provides a full-fledged console with arguments and parameter management that PHP needs in CLI mode;

The components listed above are very often used in large PHP projects and can work as “standalone” solutions.

Developing an app or website from scratch takes a lot of work. In many cases, you will need to recreate functions that have already been executed hundreds, or even thousands of times. This is a stupid job that nobody needs. Why to reinvent the wheel again? PHP frameworks, and in particular Symphony, can help you work around this problem by providing you with program blocks that you can use to build your own app.

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