contents/articles/23.html
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title: "A look at Symfony"
content-type: article
timestamp: 1146483766
tags: ""
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<p>CakePHP is <span class="caps">THE</span> perfect <span class="caps">PHP</span> framework, so <em>we</em> don’t
need anything else. Oh well, no. I personally love CakePHP, but I do believe other <span class="caps">PHP</span>
frameworks can be interesting and maybe even useful, so today I thought I’d have a look at the Simfony Project.
This framework seems to be mentioned here and there on the Net
in many different ways, someone said it can do wonders, some said it’s more advanced, others said something like
<em>“qcodo sucks.. cake stinks.. symfony rocks!!!!!”</em>, so it <span class="caps">OUGHT</span> TO be
pretty cool, definitely.
</p>
<p style="float:left;"><img src="/images/pictures/symfony.gif" alt="" /> <em>Know thy enemy</em> someone said (OK, bad
joke), so let’s have a look at this interesting alternative to CakePHP. <em>No dude, not another <span
class="caps">MVC</span>-like, pseudo-Rails, <span class="caps">AJAX</span>-worshipping framework!</em> Yes,
another one. Actually Symfony is more than that: while people <em>can</em> say CakePHP is similar to RoR for some
features and for the strong <span class="caps">MVC</span> architecture, Symfony chose another road. Yes, <span
class="caps">MVC</span> is still there, but the first thing I noticed after reading their <a
href="http://www.symfony-project.com/tutorial/my_first_project.html">beginners’ tutorial</a> was that one of
the things which Symfony seems to use quite regularly (and Cake doesn’t)is code generators. Things like
executing <code>symfony propel-build-sql</code> or even <code>symfony propel-generate-crud frontend post Post</code>
from command line to generate your code automagically, which CakePHP – except for our little <em>bake</em>
script – doesn’t use. <br />
<em>See? Simfony is <span class="caps">MUCH</span> better and <span class="caps">MUCH</span> more advanced than
Cake!</em> No, hang on a minute… I just listed one thing which Symfony has more than Cake, is there any more?
Yes, there is, for now: i18n – internationalization. Symfony comes with native multi-lingual support and Cake
doesn’t – yet – although there are rumors that i18n for Cake 2.0 is <em>almost done</em>. This is
not speculation, re-read the sentence: First off I’m referring to Cake <em>2.0</em> (which means it will take a
while) and also I read it in the <a href="https://trac.cakephp.org/wiki/Proposals/2.0ToDoList">Cake 2.0 ToDo List</a>.
</p>
<p>One of the most recurring and yet pointless critiques to CakePHP from Symfony enthusiasts is that the sites developed
with CakePHP look terrible. I perfectly agree, look at <a href="/">this</a> and tell me if the
developer is not a complete and hopeless idiot when it comes to design and look ‘n’ feel!<br />
I do agree that some CakePHP sites (mine, mainly) don’t look too good, and probably the Cake Software Foundation
should pay me to put it offline. I also agree that the Symfony website looks nice and is more pleasant to the eye than
CakePHP’s, but I do hope that the old “design contest” doesn’t get forgotten…</p>
<p style="float:right;"><img src="/images/pictures/askeet.gif" alt="" /> The Symfony team also did something truly
remarkable: a comprehensive tutorial, an advent calendar, some great free source code to download and a fully
functional Web 2.0-compliant online application <em>all in one</em>. I’m referring to Askeet, a Symfony-powered
website which has been built from scratch using the
framework and its development is well documented in <a href="http://www.symfony-project.com/askeet">twenty-four
tutorials</a>. In one move these guys made an interesting website, some useful documentation and self
promotion… what can I say: for next Christmas we’d better chain PHPnut, gwoo, nate & the others to
their chairs, close them in a small room and force them to code something like that in twenty-four days.<br />
If I were to mention something which Symfony did well I’d certainly say the <a
href="http://www.symfony-project.com/content/documentation.html">documentation</a>. Screencasts, tutorials, advent
calendars, a book, a wiki, <span class="caps">API</span> etc. etc. All done, and all good, I must admit that. The good
news is that CakePHP is slowly catching up, and now the <a href="http://manual.cakephp.org">manual</a> looks pretty
decent.</p>
<p>OK, enough flattering and let’s talk about something I didn’t like about Symfony. I downloaded the thing
and it turns out it’s 1.2MB in size, <em>a hell of a framework!</em> After extracting the beast I had a look
inside and found three directories: <code>data</code>, <code>lib</code> and <code>bin</code>. Not bad. I opened
<code>bin</code> and found the three magic symfony scripts, alright; I opened <code>data</code> and found nine
directories, I opened <code>lib</code> (the real deal) and found 25 directories! These guys maybe never heard of
something called <em>“an organized directory structure”</em>, or perhaps I’m just too used to
Cake’s logic and essentiality.<br />
Browsing around I found something like 247 .dat files defining country names and currencies in all the languages of
the world, script.aculo.us and prototype libraries, javascript calendars and other wonders… Weeeeheee! <br />
The good thing is that Symfony seems to include pretty much everything you’d ever need, the bad thing is that
<em>personally</em> I will never use any of the thirteen Chinese-related .dat files in th i18n directory. This
philosophy is exactly the opposite to Cake: at first i got pissed off when I noticed that CakePHP doesn’t
include prototype by default, but then I realized that if they started include <em>everything</em> you <em>might</em>
need <em>someday</em> we’d end up like… like Symfony, with 1.2MB of stuff 500KB of which – at least
– will most likely not be of any use for the average developers.
</p>
<p>The other dangerous consequence of including more and more stuff is the so called <em>widget-temptation</em>: If you
include script.aculo.us you <span class="caps">MUST</span> show off and offer some weird toy someone <em>may</em>
use… well, Symfony seems to go in that direction, and someone compared it to component-driven frameworks like eZ
Publish rather than more general-purposes projects. I’m sure the <a
href="http://www.symfony-project.com/content/book/page/generator.html">admin generator</a> can be damn handy, but
what happens if I’m a terribly annoying guy who’d like to tweak it and change it so that it fits
<em>my</em> needs? In Cake… well, there’s nothing “official” included in the core, and when
you find a third-party helper or component you feel you can take a look and poke around, extend it, or change it
totally. It’s all up to the developers and their needs: personally think that widgets are useful, but some times
people like a bit more flexibility.
</p>
<p>So the overall impression of Symfony is that – regardless its arguable, self-proclaimed,
<em>enterprise-ready</em> status – it is rather complex, with a steep(er) learning scheme which doesn’t
justify the extra features.
</p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.symfony-project.com/tutorial/my_first_project.html">My first Symfony project</a>
tutorial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, the weblog will handle posts, and you will enable comments on them. Edit the file sf_sandbox/config/schema.xml
and paste the following configuration:<br />
<small><br />
<pre><code>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<database name="propel" defaultIdMethod="native" noxsd="true">
<table name="weblog_post" phpName="Post">
<column name="id" type="integer" required="true" primaryKey="true" autoIncrement="true" />
<column name="title" type="varchar" size="255" />
<column name="excerpt" type="longvarchar" />
<column name="body" type="longvarchar" />
<column name="created_at" type="timestamp" /></p>
</blockquote>
</table>
<table name="weblog_comment" phpName="Comment">
<column name="id" type="integer" required="true" primaryKey="true" autoIncrement="true" />
<column name="post_id" type="integer" required="true" />
<foreign-key foreignTable="weblog_post">
<reference local="post_id" foreign="id"/>
</foreign-key>
<column name="author" type="varchar" size="255" />
<column name="email" type="varchar" size="255" />
<column name="body" type="longvarchar" />
<column name="created_at" type="timestamp" />
</table>
</database>
<p></code></pre><br />
</small><br />
This code is longer to read than to explain: It describes two tables Post and Comment.
</p>
<p>NO! Sorry, no. This is <span class="caps">NOT</span> simple. It is logic, clear and makes perfect sense, it’s
not that I’m retarded and I can’t write or read <span class="caps">XML</span> files, it’s just
unnecessary. You create this and then call the slave-script to create the model and the corresponding database
table… This is exactly the <em>enterprise</em> way of doing things CakePHP made me forget. <em>Convention over
configuration</em>. Not hundreds of configuration files.</p>
<p>But there’s more: you can even configure your views with some simple <code>.yml</code> (!) file:<br />
<pre><code>
default:
http_metas:
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
metas:
title: The best weblog ever
robots: index, follow
description: symfony project
keywords: symfony, project
language: en
</code></pre>
</p>
<p>Sure, it’s good. It helps, and it’s certainly useful, but I’d rather code a custom component to
do the same thing with a few arrays. Again, this is arguable.<br />
Validation is done through .yml files, and you can configure your administrator backend through a .yml file too!
Cake has .ini-based <span class="caps">ACL</span>, and that’s about it: if I don’t want to use them I
don’t use them. <br />
Clearly you probably don’t have to edit all settings in the configuration files, but I just don’t like
the approach, personally.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, Symfony’s slogan seems to be “professional web tools for lazy folks”…</p>
<p>It all depends on what you need. For <em>my</em> needs I chose CakePHP, and <a
href="https://trac.cakephp.org/wiki/Cake/About">here’s why</a>.</p>
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