Everyone knows that Silex is a great microframework for APIs and small sites, but what do you do when you want to build a large site, or your little tiny site has grown up? Silex has many different ways to let you build larger, complex websites that might still be too small for Symfony, but have outgrown the single page app it once was. We’ll look at what Silex offers us, and different ways we can structure our site.

1. Complex Sites with Silex
Chris Tankersley
ZendCon 2014

2. 2
Who Am I?
● A PHP Developer for 10 Years
● Lots of projects no one uses,
and a few some do
● https://github.com/dragonmantank

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What is Silex?

4. 4
Microframework
● Built off of the Symfony2
Components
● Micro Service Container
● Provides Routing
● Provides Extensions

5. 5
Why to Not Use Silex
● You have to piece things
together
● Not great for large projects

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Why use Silex?
● You can use the libraries you
want
● Great for small/medium
projects
● Prototypers best friend

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Sites Change over time

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Silex Allows Us To Adapt

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Basic Silex App

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Set up Silex
composer require “silex/silex”:”~1.2”

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Sample Silex App
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new SilexApplication();
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {
return 'Hello World';
});
$app->run();

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Congrats!

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And you add more pages
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new SilexApplication();
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/about, function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/contact', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/services', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->run();

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Service Providers

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What do they do?
● Allows code reuse
● For both services and
controllers

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Service Providers
● Twig
● URL Generator
● Session
● Validator
● Form
● HTTP Cache
● HTTP Fragments
● Security
● Remember Me
● Switftmailer
● Monolog
● Translation
● Serializer
● Doctrine
● Controllers as
Services

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And you add templating
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new SilexApplication();
$app->register(new SilexProviderTwigServiceProvider(), array(
'twig.path' => __DIR__.'/../views',
));
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {
return $app['twig']->render('homepage.html.twig');
});
$app->get('/about, function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/contact', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/services', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->run();

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Adding a Form
●We need to generate the form
●We need to accept the form
●We need to e-mail the form

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Now we add a form
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
use SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationRequest;
$app = new SilexApplication();
$app->register(new SilexProviderTwigServiceProvider(), array(
'twig.path' => __DIR__.'/views',
));
$app->register(new SilexProviderFormServiceProvider());
$app->register(new SilexProviderTranslationServiceProvider());
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/about, function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/contact', function(Request $request) use ($app) {
$form = $app['form.factory']->createBuilder('form')
->add('name')
->add('email')
->getForm()
;
$form->handleRequest($request);
if($form->isValid()) {
$data = $form->getData();
// Mail it
}
return $app['twig']->render('contact.html.twig', array('form' => $form->createView()));
});
$app->get('/services', function() use ($app) {/*..});
$app->run();

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HTTP Method Routing

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Whoops

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Allow Both Methods
<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
use SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationRequest;
$app = new SilexApplication();
$app->register(new SilexProviderTwigServiceProvider(), array(
'twig.path' => __DIR__.'/views',
));
$app->register(new SilexProviderFormServiceProvider());
$app->register(new SilexProviderTranslationServiceProvider());
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/about, function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->match('/contact', function(Request $request) use ($app) {
$form = $app['form.factory']->createBuilder('form')
->add('name')
->add('email')
->getForm()
;
$form->handleRequest($request);
if($form->isValid()) {
$data = $form->getData();
// Mail it
}
return $app['twig']->render('contact.html.twig', array('form' => $form->createView()));
})->method('GET|POST');
$app->get('/services', function() use ($app) {/*..});
$app->run();

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We've silently introduced a problem into our
code

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Code Quickly Turns to
Spaghetti
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spaghetti-prepared.jpg

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Pretend to be a big framework

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What do we need to do?
● Consistent File Layout
● Separate out functionality
● Make things more testable

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Clean up our file structure

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Break up that big file
● File for bootstrapping the app
● File for routes
● File for running the app

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web/index.php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = new SilexApplication();
require_once __DIR__ . '/../app/bootstrap.php';
require_once __DIR__ . '/../app/routes.php';
$app->run();

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app/bootstrap.php
$config = include_once 'config/config.php';
$app['config'] = $config;
$app->register(new SilexProviderTwigServiceProvider(), array(
'twig.path' => $app['config']['template_path'],
));
$app->register(new SilexProviderFormServiceProvider());
$app->register(new SilexProviderTranslationServiceProvider());

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app/routes.php
$app->get('/', function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->get('/about, function() use ($app) {/*...*/});
$app->match('/contact', function(Request $request) use ($app) {
$form = $app['form.factory']->createBuilder('form')
->add('name')
->add('email')
->getForm()
;
$form->handleRequest($request);
if($form->isValid()) {
$data = $form->getData();
// Mail it
}
return $app['twig']->render('contact.html.twig', array('form' => $form->createView()));
})->method('GET|POST');
$app->get('/services', function() use ($app) {/*..});

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Service Providers

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For Services
● Implement
SilexServiceProviderInterface
● Implement boot() and
register()

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For Controllers
● Implement
SilexControllerProviderInterface
● Implement connect()

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Sample Controller
use SilexApplication;
use SilexControllerProviderInterface;
class BlogController implements ControllerProviderInterface {
public function connect(Application $app) {
$controllers = $app['controllers_factory'];
$controllers->get('/', array($this, 'index'));
$controllers->get('/inline', function() use ($app) {
/* Logic Here */
});
}
protected function index(Application $app) {
/* Logic Here */
}
}
$app->mount('/blog', new BlogController());

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Controllers as Services
● Ships with Silex
● Allows attaching objects to
routes
● Favors dependency injection
● Framework Agnostic

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Create our Object
// src/MyApp/Controller/IndexController.php
namespace MyAppController;
use SilexApplication;
use SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationRequest;
class IndexController
{
public function indexAction(Application $app)
{
return $app['twig']->render('Index/index.html.twig');
}
public function aboutAction(Application $app) { /* … */ }
public function servicesAction(Application $app) { /* … */ }
public function contactAction(Application $app) { /* … */ }
}

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Register Controllers as
Services
$config = include_once 'config/config.php';
$app['config'] = $config;
$app->register(new SilexProviderTwigServiceProvider(), array(
'twig.path' => $app['config']['template_path'],
));
$app->register(new SilexProviderFormServiceProvider());
$app->register(new SilexProviderTranslationServiceProvider());
$app['controller.index'] = $app->share(function() use ($app) {
return new MyAppControllerIndexController();
});

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Register our routes
$app->get('/', 'controller.index:indexAction')->bind('homepage');
$app->get('/about', 'controller.index:aboutAction')->bind('about');
$app->get('/services', 'controller.index:servicesAction')->bind('services');
$app->match('/contact', 'controller.index:contactAction')->bind('contact')->method('GET|POST');

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A Little Planning goes a Long Way

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Questions?

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Thanks!
● http://joind.in/talk/view/12080
● @dragonmantank
● chris@ctankersley.com