This document provides an overview of creating a basic Symfony 2 application from a Drupal perspective. It compares common concepts like models, views, and controllers between the two frameworks. It demonstrates generating entities to represent content types in Symfony and inserting sample data. Basic routing and templating with Twig are also covered. The goal is to explain Symfony concepts and workflows to Drupal developers in familiar terms.

1. Creating a Symfony 2
Application from a
Drupal Perspective
Robyn Green
February 26, 2014

2. Robyn Green
●
Senior Developer and Themer for
Mediacurrent.
●
Bachelor of Science in Journalism,
Computer Science from University of
Central Arkansas.
●
Background in Media, news agencies.
●
Web app and Front End developer since
1996.
●
Live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
●
Build AngularJS, XCode, Django/Python
projects in my spare time.

3. What’s Going On?
● Why we talking about Symfony?
● What does this have to do with Drupal?
● Hasn’t this been covered already?

4. The Fine Print
● This is a high level presentation
○ There is no Symfony Apples === Drupal Oranges

5. The Fine Print
● This is a high level presentation
○ There is no Symfony Apples === Drupal Oranges Drupal
Blueberries

6. The Fine Print
● This is a high level presentation
○ There is no Symfony Apples === Drupal Oranges Drupal
Blueberries
● Won’t be going over Drupal 8
● No Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 module conversions
I solemnly swear to not rant and rave about best practices, my
opinion or procedural PHP vs MVC/OOP beyond what’s required
for Symfony 2 examples.

7. What Will You Do?
Build a simple Symfony 2 site using Drupal
terminology. (with examples … maybe)

8. MVC
Symfony: PHP web application framework using MVC
Drupal doesn’t have any sort of strict MVC requirement.
Example: PHP and SQL queries in theme tpl files.

9. MVC
Symfony: PHP web application framework using MVC
M: Model
● V: View
● C: Controller
●

10. MVC “Drupal”
Symfony: PHP web application framework using MVC
● M: Model
○ Content Types
● V: View
○ Theme template tpl files
● C: Controller
○ Modules

11. Lock and (down)load
Let’s create a basic site in Symfony and Drupal
Drush vs Composer
Both are CLI tools
You can install Drupal via Drush
You can install Symfony via Composer
Drush is 100% Drupal
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. It owes
allegiance to no one

12. Lock and (down)load

13. Lock and (down)load

14. Lock and (down)load

15. Lock and (down)load

16. Lock and (down)load
We need to configure Symfony first
Load config.php
Fix any Problems, most likely permissions

17. Lock and (down)load
Plug in your database information

18. Lock and (down)load

19. Lock and (down)load
Note the URL: app_dev.php
Symfony has a built-in development environment toggle that
defaults to enabled.
This runs a different URL based on the environment
parameter set

20. If You Build It, They Will Come
Basic Recipe site should have … recipes
●
●
●
●
●
Title
Category
Ingredients
Instructions
Ratings. Maybe.

21. If You Build It, They Will Come
In Drupal, this is pretty standard*
*Field Collection and Fivestar contrib modules used

22. If You Build It, They Will Come
Let’s see that again, but in Symfony this
time.

23. If You Build It, They Will Come
Building a Bundle
php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Tutorial/CoreBundle --format=yml

24. If You Build It, They Will Come
Warning: Namespace Discussions Ahead

25. If You Build It, They Will Come
Building a Bundle
php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Tutorial/CoreBundle --format=yml
Namespaces. There are standards to how this is done and Drupal is currently
using PSR-0 but heavily debating a move to PSR-4.
Symfony as of 2.4 still uses PSR-0, 1 or 2.
http://symfony.com/doc/current/contributing/code/standards.html

26. If You Build It, They Will Come
Building a Bundle
php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Tutorial/CoreBundle --format=yml
Tutorial here is the vendor name.
CoreBundle is the package name.

27. If You Build It, They Will Come
Building a Bundle
php app/console generate:bundle --namespace=Recipes/WebBundle --format=yml
YAML Format. From Symfony’s own documentation:
“YAML, YAML Ain't Markup Language, is a human friendly data serialization
standard for all programming languages.”

28. If You Build It, They Will Come
YAML
Drupal 7 Module .info
YAML

29. If You Build It, They Will Come
Ignore Acme - default example
We’ve got a Tutorial directory
CoreBundle falls under that
Everything related to that
bundle is in here

30. Symfony Content Types
That’s all great, but what about our Drupal
Content Type?
●
We have to declare the bundle before
we can generate the entity.
Don’t get confused with between Models, Entities,
Bundles and Content Types.

31. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
php app/console doctrine:generate:entity --entity="TutorialCoreBundle:recipe"
The console is going to ask us about fields in this entity. Let’s
treat it like our content type*
*we can pass fields in the command as a shortcut, but we’ll keep it simple here.

32. Symfony Content Types

33. Symfony Content Types
What does this look like in Drupal?

34. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
Think about relationships when deciding fields.
Ingredients is better as its own Entity, not on it’s own as a
Field. We’ll establish a Many-to-Many relationship.
Categories as well.

35. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
Drupal: Nodereferences, Taxonomy, even Images - anything
that needs a complex set of its own fields or data is perhaps
better suited as its own Entity in Symfony
We have to tell Symfony these items will have a relationship
In Drupal, the power of the community has done this for us
with modules like Entity Reference and Node Reference

36. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
ManyToMany
OneToMany
ManyToOne
OneToOne
These relationships are extremely powerful, and
unfortunately beyond the scope of what we can cover here.

37. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
What do the fields in this Entity look like?
src/Tutorial/CoreBundle/Entity/recipe.php
/**
* @var string
*
* @ORMColumn(name="category", type="string", length=255)
*/
private $category;

38. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
So that’s it, we have our content type minus the
different relationships?
Not quite.

39. Symfony Content Types
Building an Entity
We have to tell Symfony to update our schema:
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force

40. One Data Entry to Rule Them All
Drupal

41. One Data Entry to Rule Them All
Symfony
Remember, this is just a framework.
Also, don’t do mysql inserts directly like that. It’s hard to
establish relationships by hand.

42. One Data Entry to Rule Them All
$RecipeObj = new Recipe();
$RecipeObj->setTitle(“Yummy Recipe”);
$RecipeObj->setInstructions(“Some set of instructions”);
$RecipeObj->setCategory($CategoryObj);
$RecipeObj->setRating(2.5);
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
$em->persist($RecipeObj);
$em->flush();

43. My First Symfony Site
How do we let Symfony know about our
new bundle?
Routing
src/Tutorial/CoreBundle/Resources/routing.yml

44. My First Symfony Site
By Default, our bundle routing looks like this:
tutorial_core_homepage:
pattern: /hello/{name}
defaults: { _controller: TutorialCoreBundle:Default:index }
Which we can access here:
http://localhost/symfony/web/app_dev.php/hello/test

45. My First Symfony Site
By Default, our bundle routing looks like this:
tutorial_core_homepage:
pattern: /hello/{name}
defaults: { _controller: TutorialCoreBundle:Default:index }
Which we can access here:
http://localhost/symfony/web/app_dev.php/hello/test

46. My First Symfony Site
Imagine trying to build a custom Drupal module
page and not implementing hook_menu()
This is the same logic behind Symfony routing

47. My First Symfony Site

48. My First Symfony Site
Let’s open
src/Tutorial/CoreBundle/Resources/routing.yml
pattern:
/hello/{name}
Change To
pattern:
/
We might as well set it to our homepage.

49. My First Symfony Site
Because we’ve removed the {name} placeholder,
we have to update our Controller and Twig.
src/Tutorial/CoreBundle/Controller/DefaultController.php
$recipes = $this->getDoctrine()
->getRepository(TutorialCoreBundle:recipe')
->findBy(array(), array('name' => 'asc'));
return $this->render('TutorialCoreBundle:Default:index.html.
twig',
array('recipes' => $recipes));

50. My First Symfony Site
What did we just do?
getRepository(TutorialCoreBunder:recipe')
->findBy(array(), array('name' => 'asc'))
Is basically the same as building a View
- of node.type = ‘recipe’
- sort by node.title, asc
But instead of outputting formatting or building a block, we’re
just storing a collection of objects.

51. My First Symfony Site
What did we just do?
We pass that $recipes collection on to Twig

52. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig
●
Drupal’s page.tpl.php
●
We can add whatever markup we need, but no PHP
●
Even better, define a base.html.twig and extend it
●
Extend allows us to use all the features of the parent, but
override when necessary
{% extends 'TutorialCoreBundle:Default:base.html.twig' %}

53. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig
<div>
{% for recipe in recipes %}
<h1>{{ recipe.title }}</h1>
{% endfor %}
</div>

54. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig

55. My First Symfony Site
Drupal page.tpl.php

56. My First Symfony Site
Twig

57. My First Symfony Site
Twig
One last thing ...

58. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig

59. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig
Except, that wasn’t Twig
That was Django. Python.

60. My First Symfony Site
Django index.html

61. My First Symfony Site
Twig index.html.twig
Because the backend logic is decoupled from the front
end display, the markup structure is so similar any
themer or front end developer can pick up these
templates without first having to learn the backend
code.

62. Thank You!
Questions?
@Mediacurrent
Mediacurrent.com
slideshare.net/mediacurrent