10 Advantages Of The Symfony PHP Framework

10 Advantages Of The Symfony PHP Framework

When you are about to develop a PHP web application, which is the framework that you would use? There are plenty of highly popular PHP frameworks in the market that choosing the best one for your project might be a challenge. You can choose among Laravel, Yii, Symphony and so on.

Symphony, with its set of reusable PHP components is the standard foundation on which the best PHP application is built. This is built on a set of decoupled and reusable PHP components (about 30 of them) called Symphony Components. Symphony released under the MIT license was published as free software on October 18, 2005.

The main aim of Symphony was to speed up the task of web development by avoiding receptive coding tasks, especially for enterprise driven robust applications. Symphony was famous for its friendly community of developers who will be right there when you need them. The framework is available under an Open Source license, so developers can add their own modules.

In this article, we will discus more about Symphony and its main advantages.

1. Fast app development

One of the cardinal purposes of using a framework is the speed at which it lets you develop apps. The main purpose of developing Symphony was also to help developers develop apps quickly, thanks to its module system and reusable components. However, different framework might be suitable for different kinds of projects, so you might have to do a comparative study of the different frameworks before choosing one. Interestingly, Symphony is about 3 times faster than Zend, another popular PHP framework. It takes up very little memory space when compared to its counterparts and comes equipped with the requirements that is more suitable for real world needs.

2. The incredible usage of Reusable Components

Symphony runs in the MVC framework. MVC or the Model Controller View paradigm, as it is the application framework written in PHP. This works on Reusable Components concept and is among the frameworks with the best modularity. Project development moves fast as planned because developers are using Reusable Components and the shareholders are happy because the TMM or Time to Market is faster. Code testing is also faster and easier. One of the major advantages that Symphony has over other frameworks is the modularity that it offers, making the framework highly incredible and very practical.

3. Great Templating system

Twig, a contemporary templating system which helps developers write lucid and concise codes is one of the fastest, secure and most reliable PHP template engine in Symphony. Twix comes equipped with a sandbox mode that allows for the evaluation of untrusted template code. Twig has a flexible parser and lever that allows the developers to define their own custom tags and filters or create their own DSL. Due to these features, Twig has evolved to be a template language that allows users to modify the template design as their requirement goes.

4. Symphony helps developers to innovate

The unmatched speed, reusability and flexibility of Symphony is what makes it one of the topmost PHP frameworks. It follows the industry’s best practices and incorporates some of the best and most pioneering tools in the industry, and comes integrated with features like dependency injection. The other thing that makes Symphony unique is the web debug toolbar that it comes with, increasing the productivity feature of the developer community. SensioLabs incorporates new features into the debug toolbar every now and then, so check them out before getting down to app development.

5. Interoperability

Symphony supports interoperability, in the sense that while it supports the existing “de facto Standards” of PHP like naming conventions or classes and PHPUnit, it gives the freedom to the developer to use certain software building blocks like translation management, dependency injector and forms management. Additionally, Symphony lets you develop contemporary web applications and it is fully compliant with business libraries, infrastructures, libraries and enables faster development of custom applications.

6. Expendable plugin bundles

Symphony has a horde of plugins that are also known as bundles. The purpose of the bundle is to the enhance the features and functionality of the frameworks. And the good news is that these plugin bundles can be used and reused in other projects. And it is easy to make changes to these bundles, even right at the core of the project.

7. Caching management

Symphony has very good caching management system because MySQL executes every read query executed by Symphony. A pool of all the statements will be retained in the MySQL, making it easy to execute them in the future. There is another option, known as Fragment caching, which is also another feature that you can enjoy with Symphony. This is done by caching portions or fragments of a page, so you can reduce trips to your database whenever the need arises. Examples would be shopping basket, bog comments, member login status.

8. Plenty of resources

When you choose Symphony, you are never alone. There are plenty of resources open right before you, in the form of community support, mailing lists, IRC, so if you are looking for answers while working with Symphony, you will always find them.

9. Symphony Philosophy

Once you visit the website of Symphony, you will see them talking about Symphony Philosophy. This is an important feature of Symphony, and it talks about the best practices and professional standards in web based applications. The fundamental criterion behind Symphony is that it will meet the developer’s needs. It will never let you down.

10. Symphony is user-friendly

Developers like to choose frameworks that are easy to use and are flexible. This is a framework that is equally accessible for both newbie developers and veterans. Additionally, the framework provides a highly functional environment for the developer team making the whole process of web app development a great experience.

Closing thoughts

If you are looking for a good framework to start with your new app development project, have no doubts, Symphony is the answer.

Interesting links about the topic:
What Are The Advantages Of Symfony
Pros And Cons Of Symfony Framework

Pictures: Flicker.com / Stephen Yeargin/ javier.eguiluz

The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at www.Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.