How to Install and Get Started with Symfony 2 on Ubuntu 14.04

Symfony is a full-stack, open source PHP framework. It’s well known for its independent components which can be easily integrated into any other PHP project. The Symfony framework is suitable for building PHP applications of any size, including console applications meant to run only on the command line.

In this tutorial, we will see how to install, configure, and get started with a Symfony 2 application on Ubuntu 14.04.

For this tutorial, you will need:

• One Ubuntu 14.04 server
• A sudo non-root user, which you can set up by following the Initial Server Setup tutorial

Before we get started, we’ll need to install PHP for the command line environment. There’s no need to install a full-featured web server such as Apache or Nginx because Symfony comes with a console command that makes it trivial to run and manage PHP’s built-in web server while you are developing your application. It´s a simple and efficient way to run the application while it’s in development mode.

First, let’s update the package manager cache:

sudo apt-get update

Now, in order to use and execute PHP scripts via the command line, install the php5-cli package.

sudo apt-get install php5-cli

You should now have PHP installed on your server. To check if it was successfully installed, run:

php -v

And you should get output similar to this:

Output
PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.11 (cli) (built: Jul 2 2015 15:23:08)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies

Symfony requires that the option date.timezone is set in your php.ini file(s). If you are testing this tutorial on a fresh server, this option is not defined yet. If that’s the case, your Symfony application won’t run.

We’ll need to edit the server’s php.ini file to make sure we have this option defined. This file should be located at /etc/php5/cli/php.ini.

Open the php.ini file using nano or your favorite command line editor:

sudo nano /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Search for the line containing date.timezone. Uncomment the directive by removing the ; sign in the beginning of the line, and add the appropriate timezone for your application. In this example we’ll use Europe/Amsterdam, but you can choose any supported timezone.

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam

Save the file and exit.

The easiest way to create a new Symfony project is by using the official Symfony Installer. It’s a simple script created to facilitate the bootstrap of new Symfony applications.

The following command will download the Symfony Installer and place it on your /usr/local/bin path:

sudo curl -LsS http://symfony.com/installer -o /usr/local/bin/symfony

Now, you’ll need to make the script executable with the next command:

sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/symfony

To test the Symfony Installer, run:

symfony

The output should look like this:

Output
 Symfony Installer (1.1.7)
 =========================

 This is the official installer to start new projects based on the
 Symfony full-stack framework.

 To create a new project called blog in the current directory using
 the latest stable version of Symfony, execute the following command:

   symfony new blog

. . .

Now that we have the Symfony Installer in place, we can proceed and create a new Symfony project. Because this is a development setup and we will be using PHP’s built-in web server, you can go ahead an create the project inside your home directory. For this example, we’ll create a project named “myproject”, but you can use your own project name in the next command.

cd ~
symfony new myproject

This will create a new folder myproject inside your home directory, containing a brand new Symfony application. The command will produce output similar to this:

Output
 Downloading Symfony...

 Preparing project...

 ✔  Symfony 2.7.3 was successfully installed. Now you can:

    * Change your current directory to /home/sammy/myproject

    * Configure your application in app/config/parameters.yml file.

    * Run your application:
        1. Execute the php app/console server:run command.
        2. Browse to the http://localhost:8000 URL.

    * Read the documentation at http://symfony.com/doc

The built-in web server that comes with PHP (since PHP 5.4) is suited for running PHP applications while in development, for testing, or for demonstrations. It enables a more frictionless experience because you won’t need to bother configuring a full-featured web server like Apache or Nginx.

Symfony comes with a console command that facilitates the process of starting / stopping PHP’s built-in web server, also allowing (since Symfony 2.6) you to run the web server in the background.

The Symfony console is a CLI script that has several commands to help you build and test your application. You can even include your own commands written in PHP!

The web server can be initiated anytime with the console command server:run. However, the default settings used by the Symfony command will only accept connections to localhost on port 8000. If you are following this tutorial on an external development / testing server or a local virtual machine, you’ll need to provide an extra parameter to the command, telling the web server to listen to a different IP address.

To allow connections coming from both internal and external networks, run this command from inside the project directory:

php app/console server:run 0.0.0.0:8000

Output
Server running on http://0.0.0.0:8000

Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

This will start PHP’s built-in web server, listening to all network interfaces on port 8000.

Now you should be able to access the application if you point your browser to http://your_server_ip:8000. You should see a page like this:

The command will keep running in the active terminal until you terminate its execution with CTRL+C. To make the web server run in the background, you should use the server:start command instead:

php app/console server:start 0.0.0.0:8000

Output
Web server listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000

This will make the web server run in the background, leaving your terminal session free for executing other commands. To stop the server, you should use:

php app/console server:stop 0.0.0.0:8000

Output
Stopped the web server listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000

You can also check the status of the web server with:

php app/console server:status 0.0.0.0:8000

When the server is not running, this is the output you should get:

Output
No web server is listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000

When there’s an active server running in the specified IP and port, you should get output like this:

Output
Web server still listening on http://0.0.0.0:8000

Just remember that the server:stop and server:status commands should include the same IPADDRESS:PORT portion you used when initiating the server with server:start.

Symfony is a full-stack PHP framework suited for building applications of any size. In this tutorial, we saw how to install and get started with Symfony 2 on a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 server using PHP’s built-in web server to run the application. For more information on how to build PHP applications using Symfony, have a look at their official documentation.