Blog of Auzigog – Jeremy Blanchard

Symfony doesn’t play well with the default OS X server setup, so you will need an alternative setup. This tutorial assumes you are using MAMP but XAMPP is also an option.

This tutorial will get a server up and running that works with Symfony and allow you to access your projects from http://ProjectName.localhost/

Configure Server

• Download the latest version of MAMP. This can take a while.
• Install MAMP
• Allow MAMP’s copy of PHP, PEAR, and MySQL to run from the terminal:

sudo mv /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php-old
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/php /usr/bin/php
sudo mv /usr/bin/pear /usr/bin/pear-old
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/pear /usr/bin/pear
sudo mv /usr/bin/mysql /usr/bin/mysql-old
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql /usr/bin/mysql

• Symfony can use a lot of memory in the development environment, so you need to edit /Applications/MAMP/conf/php5/php.ini to allow it scripts to use more memory. I changed mine from 8M to 200M.

memory_limit = 200M ;

Set up your project

Either grab a fresh project from the Symfony website or start from your own existing project.

To make sure your project is secure (even if your server isn’t publicly accessible), put the Symfony project files outside your webroot (/Applications/MAMP/htdocs). I put mine in ~/workspace/ProjectName.

Set up a subdomain for this project

To make your project accessible from http://YourProject.localhost/ you must edit your Apache config file.

For the first project you ever add, put this code at the end of /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf

Be sure to only have this line once in your configuration



NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80
Listen 127.0.0.1:80

For each project you create, add this section of code with paths modified to reflect the location of your code.

 ServerName YOUR_PROJECT_NAME.localhost
 DocumentRoot "/Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/workspace/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/web"
 DirectoryIndex index.php
 <Directory "/Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/workspace/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/web">
   AllowOverride All
   Allow from All
 </Directory>

 Alias /sf /Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/workspace/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf
 <Directory "/Users/YOUR_USER_NAME/workspace/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf">
   AllowOverride All
   Allow from All
 </Directory>

For each project, you must also edit the /etc/hosts file and add this line to the end:

127.0.0.1       YOUR_PROJECT_NAME.localhost

Now use the MAMP control panel to restart Apache.

Database

Note: This section doesn’t apply to those with a fresh project generated by Symfony

If you’re working on a pre-existing project, you need to load in any existing database tables.

Open the file ~/workspace/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME/config/databases.yml and look for a section like this:

all:
 propel:
   class: sfPropelDatabase
   param:
     classname: PropelPDO
     dsn: 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=DATABASE_NAME'
     username: USERNAME
     password: PASSWORD
     encoding: utf8
     persistent: true
     pooling: true

Use phpMyAdmin (located at http://localhost/MAMP/) to create a user with that password. You also need to create a database with that name and assign the user to it.

Now you need to create all the tables for this project and load in any fixtures. Use the terminal to browse to the root of your project directly and run the following commands:

php symfony propel:build-sql
php symfony propel:insert-sql --no-confirmation
php symfony propel:build-all-load --no-confirmation
php symfony cache:clear

NetBeans and Xdebug

I use NetBeans PHP distribution with Xdebug for step-by-step debug support. There is a fantastic tutorial to set up both using MAMP.

The only part of that tutorial that didn’t work was the way php.ini was configured.

First, comment out these lines at the end of /Applications/MAMP/conf/php5/php.ini (by placing a semicolon at the beginning of the line):

[Zend]

zend_optimizer.optimization_level=15

zend_extension_manager.optimizer=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.3

zend_optimizer.version=3.3.3

zend_extension=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/zend/lib/ZendExtensionManager.so

Now add the following lines to the end of the file instead of the ones mentioned in the tutorial:

Xdebug config for Mac OS X and NetBeans IDE



zend_extension=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20050922/xdebug.so
xdebug.default_enable = On
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_mode=req
xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.idekey=netbeans-xdebug
xdebug.remote_log = /tmp/xdebug.log

Also I just skipped the MySQL Administrator program because I prefer to use phpMyAdmin (which comes with MAMP).

Finally, I can’t use normal NetBeans breakpoints to halt the code. I have to place xdebug_break(); on the line that I want it to break on. This is slightly annoying, but having the power of a full debugger is certainly worth this small inconvenience.

Extras:

• Learn how to start MAMP silently (without the control panel window)
• Very detailed guide to setting MAMP up on OS X
• Supercharge your MAMP Environment

Conclusion

You should now be able to access your project from http://YourProject.localhost/

If you’re new to Symfony, here are some resources that will help you out:

• The Definitive Guide to Symfony
• Jobeet Tutorial – A step-by-step tutorial for a real-world project
• Symfony API

If you have any suggestions for improving this tutorial or if you are having any trouble with it, please leave a comment below. Thanks!

Computers, Guides, Programming apache, code, mac osx, mysql, osx, php, server, symfony