The Definitive Guide to symfony (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

François Zaninotto (Author), Fabien Potencier (Author)

Book Description

Series: Expert's Voice in Open Source | Publication Date: January 26, 2007

Web application frameworks are one of the today's hottest topics, presenting developers with proven solutions for building applications faster than ever. Spurred on by the enormous success of Ruby on Rails, frameworks are being built in a variety of other languages, with the bulk of activity surrounding PHP. While numerous framework projects are well under way, none are as mature nor as popular as Symfony (http://www.symfony-project.com/). Bundled with numerous tools for helping document, debug, and test your applications, and developed in a manner encouraging agile development principles, Symfony is sparking the imagination of thousands of developers around the globe.

Authored by project and documentation leads Fabien Potencier and François Zaninotto, The Definitive Guide to Symfony serves as a complete guide to all aspects of Symfony. Readers are guided through fundamental concepts such as installation, configuration, and security, followed by thorough discussion of advanced concepts such as scaffolding, routing, caching, and internationalization. Accompanied by hundreds of practical code examples, this book will help readers quickly master rapid application development using this popular framework.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

François Zaninotto is documentation lead for the Symfony project.

Fabien Potencier is project lead for the Symfony project, and founder of Sensio, a French Web agency well known for its innovative views on Web development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (January 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590597869
• ISBN-13: 978-1590597866
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #527,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-have for Symfony users!, March 10, 2007

By 

Douglas Choma - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Definitive Guide to symfony (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

The power of this amazing framework is truly revealed after you see how much thought has gone into its planning and documentation. I have been using the Symfony framework for six months with great success, but this book has given me a new perspective on Symfony's capabilities. PHP has been a mainstay in my web design business for almost 10 years, and I've used a number of different libraries and frameworks over the years. But nothing I've tried has come close to Symfony. The framework takes out the drudgery of common tasks like form processing and database/object interactions; and it does it in a way that is highly configurable. This book and framework have made web programming fun again.

Each chapter walks you through an important framework element from installation and setup to advanced features (cache control, plugin development, optimizing applications). It's written by two of the framework's lead developers. I would consider it a must-have for anyone using the Symfony framework.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Also available online, August 8, 2007

By 

R. Duarte "rahjicom" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Definitive Guide to symfony (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Well written and understandable for such a large chunk of software. You can be the judge yourself, of course, by reading it online before you buy the hard copy. I'd definitely recommend having the real thing if you're just starting with symfony though.. you can't dogear or bookmark the online version.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imperitive for the Aspiring Symfony Developer, November 1, 2007

By 

dancablam (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Definitive Guide to symfony (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

I'm a freelancer that was in search of a framework that would allow me to expeditiously develop applications for my clients, without sacrificing reliability. After researching several PHP-based MVC frameworks, I landed on symnfony due to its comprehensive set of features, strong OOP support, PHP5 utilization, and (very importantly) the great documentation. Yes, this book is available in web format online - but I'm very glad I made the purchase so I could learn the framework as I traveled, and it's much easier to use as a reference (I have it sprawled across my desk as I type this review). If you're looking for a great framework, I'm convinced symfony is it. And if you're looking to learn symfony, and have a resource as you build your skills, this book is what you'll need. The only caviat is, if you have no Object-Oriented programming experience, I would recommend you pick up "Objects, Patterns, & Practice" by Apress before learning symfony.