Symfony 4 & Symfony Flex - Core ideas, features and improvements

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Symfony 4 & Symfony Flex Core ideas, features and improvements Victoria Quirante

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I work at Limenius We build tailor-made projects with Symfony and React We have been working with Symfony since 2008 SF4 means a significant evolution Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected]

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SYMFONY 4 MOTIVATION What are the driving forces behind this new version https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/14411386334

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SYMFONY 4 MOTIVATION Or why the hell do we have to change things again https://www.flickr.com/photos/mindaugasdanys/3766009204

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«As a developer, I want to start small, without too many dependencies. But I also want to be able to grow my application as I see fit. From a micro-framework style app to a gigantic monolith. Your choice. The framework should not get in the way.» Fabien Potencier «Symfony Flex is all about making it simple and easy to create any Symfony applications, from the most simple micro-style project to the more complex ones with dozens of dependencies. It automates adding and removing bundles. It takes care of giving you sensible defaults. It helps discovering good bundles.» Fabien Potencier

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] SF 4 seems like the result of a SWOT analysis Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] S W O T Flexible Powerful Config time high Learning curve SF 2 Web development environment

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Recent evolution of the web development environment Our favourite framework Some jQuery { { Back-end Front-end

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Recent evolution of the web development environment Our favourite framework Some jQuery { { Back-end Front-end Backbone.js Ember.js Angular.js Gulp Grunt Vue.js Webpack React.js chats notifications immediate validations page reloads

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Our favourite framework Some jQuery Recent evolution of the web development environment { { Back-end Front-end Our favourite front-end framework Our favourite back-end framework API Backbone.js Ember.js Angular.js Gulp Grunt Vue.js Webpack React.js chats notifications immediate validations page reloads

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Our favourite framework Some jQuery Recent evolution of the web development environment { { Back-end Front-end Our favourite front-end framework Our favourite back-end framework API Our favourite front-end framework API API API API API

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Then, what is expected from a back-end framework nowadays?

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] - To be a great solution for APIs - To make easy to build some functionalities (admin panels, etc.) - To be efficient creating small apps and microservices - ... What is expected nowadays from a back-end framework? To take good care of the back-end

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] SF 4 seems like the result of a SWOT analysis S W O T Flexible Powerful Config times high Learning curve APIs everywhere Microservices needed Backends needed Drupal/Laravel Frontend revolution SF 2 Web development environment

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In front of this, what things should we change?

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SYMFONY 4 PHILOSOPHY https://www.flickr.com/photos/68532869@N08/16357411958

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony roadmap

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony 2 was two things 1. A full stack framework 1. A full stack framework 2. A set of independent components

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony 2 was two things 1. A full stack framework But “developing in Symfony 2” generally meant using the full framework

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Example: If you wanted to build a console app before You could start with the full FW and get many things you don’t need Or go for the components approach… and fight quite a bit

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony 2 VS Symfony 4 graphically SF 2 web app SF 2 API SF 2 microservice

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony 2 VS Symfony 4 graphically SF 2 web app SF 2 API SF 2 microservice SF 4 web app SF 4 API SF 4 microservice

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Working with SF 4 SF 4 web app SF 4 API SF 4 microservice SF 4

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SF4 is not a new FW, it is a new mindset behind the same FW

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony 4 - Compose your application Make easy to create projects with lots or few dependencies For that, they wanted automate bundle installation/configuration

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It is key that we can make our project grow or shrink very easily

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Working with SF 4 SF 4 web app SF 4 API SF 4 microservice SF 4 We need something to smooth out this transformations

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SYMFONY FLEX What exactly is it

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SF FLEX is not a version of SF, it is a tool to implement SF4’s philosophy

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Symfony Flex - Automation to the max It is a composer plugin that comes with Symfony 4 Moving towards zero configuration time It also “promotes” a curated list of official recipes

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Internals Modifies the behaviour of the require and update commands Allows Symfony to perform tasks before or after the Composer commands

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works composer require mailer It installs and enables SwiftmailerBundle

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works composer req mailer It installs and enables SwiftmailerBundle

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer Symfony Flex server Is there information about this package?

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer Is there information about this package? Going for regular installation via Composer Nope Symfony Flex server

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer Is there information about this package? Symfony Flex server

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer Is there information about this package? Yes, sending recipe Cool, following recipe instructions! Symfony Flex server

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] How it works Your application with Symfony Flex composer require mailer Is there information about this package? Asking Composer to install them Yes, sending recipe Cool, following recipe instructions! Deciding which packages to install Symfony Flex server

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Recipes Defined in a manifest.json file May contain other files or directories It ‘explains’ Symfony Flex what things need to be done

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Recipes { "bundles": { "Symfony\\Bundle\\SwiftmailerBundle\\SwiftmailerBundle": ["all"] }, "copy-from-recipe": { "config/": "%CONFIG_DIR%/" }, "env": { "MAILER_URL": "smtp://localhost:25?encryption=&auth_mode=" }, "aliases": ["mailer", "mail"] }

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Recipes List of alternative shorter names for the package { "bundles": { "Symfony\\Bundle\\SwiftmailerBundle\\SwiftmailerBundle": ["all"] }, "copy-from-recipe": { "config/": "%CONFIG_DIR%/" }, "env": { "MAILER_URL": "smtp://localhost:25?encryption=&auth_mode=" }, "aliases": ["mailer", "mail"] }

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Official and unofficial recipes Two repositories: core and contrib official repository (very) opinionated approval from SF core team Symfony Flex looks here aliases core community repository not opinionated - Symfony Flex may look here - contrib

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Creating a new Symfony app with Symfony Flex composer create-project symfony/skeleton my-project

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Creating a new Symfony app with Symfony Flex composer create-project symfony/skeleton my-project "require": { "php": "^7.0.8", "symfony/flex": "^1.0", "symfony/console": "^4.0", "symfony/framework-bundle": "^4.0", "symfony/lts": "^4@dev", "symfony/yaml": "^4.0" }, Downloads the Symfony skeleton (just one composer.json)

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] May I avoid using Symfony Flex? Yes, you can install/configure things as you used to But Symfony Flex is the default way of doing things in Symfony 4

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] May I use Symfony Flex with an old project? Yes, but installing Symfony Flex is not enough You need to update the directory structure https://symfony.com/doc/master/setup/flex.html#upgrading-existing-applications-to-flex

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WHAT HAS CHANGED Things we have to ‘relearn’ https://www.flickr.com/photos/vialbost/37167061631

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Do you remember those never-ending discussions about one VS multiple bundle apps?

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Guess what was the right answer…

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«[...] We worked hard during the last few months to make sure that Symfony 4 can embrace bundle-less applications. So Symfony 4 will recommend and generate bundle-less applications.» Fabien Potencier «No more bundle for your code, just use App\ as a namespace for any class under src/. It reduces the perceived complexity. It also makes your code feel more decoupled from Symfony.» Fabien Potencier

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Bundle-less applications Change in best practices No more one-bundle-application Now zero-bundle-application is recommended In practice, not difficult to get used to this

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Directory structure my-project/ ├── config/ │ ├── bundles.php │ ├── packages/ │ ├── routes.yaml │ └── services.yaml ├── public/ │ └── index.php ├── src/ │ ├── ... │ └── Kernel.php ├── templates/ └── vendor/ It may be a bit tricky at the beginning, but it is actually simpler

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] config/bundles.php File where installed bundles get referenced Symfony Flex is going to write here

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] config.yml -> packages/package-name.yaml Forget about the single long config file Now our configuration is splitted in different files One file per package/bundle and environment

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] parameters.yml -> Environment variables Now we have .env More standard way of managing settings # .env APP_ENV=dev APP_DEBUG=1 APP_SECRET=d5b7eb4ea25adca8c17bsdsc126831c DATABASE_URL="mysql://travolta:[email protected]:3306/travolta"#

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Unified web front controller No more app.php and app_dev.php Just one (public/index.php) Trickier to switch between them But it is considered a better practice # public/index.php $kernel = new Kernel($_SERVER['APP_ENV'] ?? 'dev', $_SERVER['APP_DEBUG'] ?? false);

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WHAT IS NEW What new shiny things do we get? https://www.flickr.com/photos/blondinrikard/14419731227

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Of course, Symfony Flex, but what else?

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Some key things already introduced in SF 3 - Automated configuration: - Autowiring - _defaults, _instanceof - Autoconfiguration - Further standardization: - PSR-4 based service discovery - PSR-11 containers - ... https://symfony.com/blog

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Many not too flashy but yet powerful additions - Improvements in: - Guard authentication - Forms - Injection of tag services - Console exceptions - Overriding templates - ... - Integration with Bootstrap 4 form theme - ... https://symfony.com/blog

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AND, finally, just when we had lost almost all hope...

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A great solution for the assets

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Webpack Encore It simplifies the integration of our Symfony project with Webpack Webpack is a great tool to process the assets Configuring Webpack is not easy But Webpack Encore solves that

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DEMO TIME Let’s create a project with Symfony Flex https://www.flickr.com/photos/callmewhatever/30708918322

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Let’s create a project with Symfony Flex We are going to create a project with API Platform and EasyAdmin

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] API Platform

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] EasyAdmin

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] composer create-project symfony/skeleton apiadmin-project cd apiadmin-project composer req api composer req admin composer req webserver - Create Entity - Config database bin/console doctrine:schema:update - Tell API Platform and EasyAdmin about our Entity bin/console server:run Demo time Let’s do it

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EVALUATING How good are these changes?

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Fair questions about SF 4 & SF Flex 1. Is it more difficult now to develop a ‘standard web project’? 2. Trying to make config extra simple… is it getting more obscure? 3. Are ‘official packages’ too promoted? Still early to know

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] The good It makes sense not to carry dependencies that you are not using The things we need to adapt to are not difficult Moving further towards standardization

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] The real good Trying to adapt to the upcoming challenges Webpack Encore Working together with the front-end, not fighting against it

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BET 1: Let’s embrace the position of the back-end framework in the landscape, and try to adapt to our time BET 2: Let’s keep our Symfony as powerful and flexible, while trying to compete against more high-level-oriented solutions

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] Fears and hopes Great FW to create fully tailored-made apps SF It tries to gain ground on more high-level-oriented solutions It remains as good as always (or better) for that While making easier to build some “standard” stuff Optimistic outcome Pessimistic outcome It loses focus It loses love from traditional SF developers

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FINAL THOUGHTS What to remember https://www.flickr.com/photos/dewalick/15842170328

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] To summarize S W O T Flexible Powerful Config times high Learning curve APIs everywhere Microservices needed Backends needed Drupal/Laravel Frontend revolution SF 2 Web development environment

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Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected] To summarize Clear answer to the current times Imho, the direction taken looks promising There may be some risks, but it depends on how will it evolve The community has, of course, a lot to say in this

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Thanks! Victoria Quirante @vicqr [email protected]