Slides from my talk at PHP User group Minsk (Oct 30 2014)

1. Some tips to improve
developer experience
with Symfony
by Artem Kolesnikov (@tyomo4ka)
1

2. Common
recommendations
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3. Code style
• Symfony uses PSR-1 and PSR-2
• Symfony extends PSRs with Symfony Coding
Standards
• PHP CS Fixer supports PSRs and Symfony
• Broken windows theory
3

4. Prefer clean naming to
comments
• "Every time you write a comment, you should
grimace and feel the failure of your ability of
expression." © Robert C. Martin "Clean code"
• Always comment complex and not obvious logic
• Remove obsolete comments
• Never commit commented unused code
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5. Avoid business logic in
controllers
• Fat stupid ugly controllers (FSUC)
// FSUC
public function updateUserAction(User $user, $userData)
{
$user->updateFromArray($userData);
$this->getDoctrine()->getManager()->flush($user);
}
// OK
public function updateUserAction(User $user, $userData)
{
$this->get('user_manager')->update($user, $userData);
}
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6. Use PHP Storm IDE
• Code analysis
• Great Symfony2 plugin
• Plugins for Behat, composer
• And much, much more
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7. Use PHP syntax sugar and
new features
• Short syntax for arrays
• Other syntactic sugar
• Traits
$options = ['yes', 'no'];
$user = (new User())->setEmail('tyomo4ka@gmail.com');
$headers = $this->getRequest()['headers'];
return $result ?: [];
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8. Don't use interfaces when
you don't need it
• Dependency on abstract class works as well
• Introduce interface is much simpler than remove
• Interfaces for everything...
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9. Symfony specific
recommendations
9

10. Don't inject service container
in business logic services
/** Service which does not depend on Container */
class UserManager
{
private $em;
public function __construct(EntityManager $em)
{
$this->em = $em;
}
}
/** Service which depends on Container */
class UserManager
{
private $container;
public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
{
$this->container = $container;
}
}
10

11. Use one bundle for
application
• Recommendation from
"Official Symfony Best
Practices"
• AppBundle vs App
• use AppEntityUser;
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12. Always use param
converters
• Param convert works using request attributes
public function someAction(ContextEntity $entity) {}
• Don't write action like this
public function deleteTagAction()
{
$this->get('xxx.tag_manager')->deleteTagFromStream(
$this->getRequest()->get('stream_id'),
$this->getRequest()->get('tag_id')
);
}
• This looks much cleaner
public function deleteTagAction(Stream $stream, Tag $tag)
{
$this->get('xxx.tag_manager')
->deleteTagFromStream($stream, $tag)
;
}
12

13. Prefer security voters to ACL
• Each ACL check requires requests to DB
• Voters are simple
interface VoterInterface
{
function supportsAttribute($attribute);
function supportsClass($class);
function vote(TokenInterface $token, $object, array $attributes);
}
• Abstract voter (Symfony 2.6+)
abstract class AbstractVoter implements VoterInterface
{
abstract protected function getSupportedClasses();
abstract protected function getSupportedAttributes();
abstract protected function isGranted($attribute, $object, $user = null);
}
13

14. Prefer Grunt or Gulp to Assetic
if you have reach front-end
• Assetic is good if you don't have too much
assets
• Cool like a Frontend Developer: Grunt,
RequireJS, Bower and other Tools by Ryan
Weaver (slides and video)
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15. Recommendations from
"Official Symfony Best
Practices"
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16. Always use Composer
to install Symfony
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17. Configuration management
• Use constants to define configuration options
that rarely change
• Don't define a semantic dependency injection
configuration for your bundles
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18. Services definitions
• The name of your application's services should be
as short as possible, ideally just one simple word
• Use the YAML format to define your own services
• Don't define parameters for the classes of your
services
<parameter key="jms_serializer.metadata.file_locator.class">
MetadataDriverFileLocator
</parameter>
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19. Configuration format
• Use annotations to define the mapping
information of the Doctrine entities
• Use annotations to configure routing, caching
and security whenever possible
• Don't use the @Template() annotation to
configure the template used by the controller
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20. Templating
• Use Twig templating format for your templates
• PHP templating engine will be removed in the
future
• Store all your application's templates in app/
Resources/views/ directory
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21. Some other official recommendations
• Define your forms as PHP classes
• Always use keys for translations instead of
content strings
{{ 'project_name' |trans }} // Good
{{ 'Project name' |trans }} // Not good
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22. Some services to improve
quality of your projects
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23. Codeship CI
http://codeship.io
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24. Travis CI
https://travis-ci.org/
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25. SensioLabs Insight
https://insight.sensiolabs.com/
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26. Scrutinizer CI
https://scrutinizer-ci.com
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27. Check new bundles while
your drinking your morning coffee
Check new bundles while your drinking
your morning coffee
http://knpbundles.com/
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28. And finally my favorite
joke about developers :)
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29. The first year
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30. The second year
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31. The third year
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32. The fifth year
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33. The tens year
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34. Thanks!
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