X-Share – cool tutorial for learning Symfony2 Framework

Hello,

At the moment of writing this blog post I’m working in Pentalog, which is a computer and technology services company, focusing on low cost offshore/nearshore IT engineering and software development.

Few days ago I found out, that as a result of our summer internship program some of the developers from our company created a great tutorial called X-Share. Following this tutorial you’ll create a website, that permits sharing of some objects between the members of a group. As an example it could be sharing books, sharing of the discount cards, sports equipment, etc. This tutorial is open sourced and is on SourceForge.

I hope you guys will find it useful, because one of you right now could be searching for a practical example of a  Symfony2 working application. And a little disclaimer: although I’m very proud of what my colleagues have done and achieved, I wasn’t involved in any way in creation and developing of this tutorial, so all the credits goes to them.

P.S. It is great to see how open source community evolves, and I hope X-Share become your first place to show to your new junior PHP developer for learning Symfony2 basics.

Unified Udevi Symfony2 Plugin for NetBeans 7.2

Hello,

I’ve recently created the unified Udevi Symfony2 Plugin that contains both File Templates plugin as well as Code Templates plugin. This plugin is made for new version of NetBeans - 7.2. It passed the validation today so you can install it directly from NetBeans. Go to Tools –> Plugins –> Available plugins. You might need to update plugins info, so it will contain the latest list of validated plugins.

The content of the plugin remained the same, just uniting 2 templates content. The current statistic is

In the previous table I counted number of days that this extension is published in the NetBeans Plugins Center until today. So 2.5 downloads per day isn’t so bad I would say. Probably Symfony2 and NetBeans are a good combination and a lot of people know it. But 5.5 per day is definitely better. I guess now when it is validated in Plugins Center it will sustain current number of downloads per day

I would like to give a shout to first and I hope not the last person making 5 pull requests in total for those 2 plugins:

   Smeagol07     -       Thank you very much I hope that with the input of the community I will improve the quality of the product into something much bigger, than it is today.

 

I would also like to thank NetBeans team, because their 7.2 version has a higher performance than the previous version and made my plugin run much faster without lots of time for processing.

I’d also like to hear from you what else would you like to improve in your day to day job with Symfony2 and NetBeans and who knows may be I will be able to fulfill your expectations.

the bad part

While File templates are working fine, the code templates are not completely working, the only code templates that are working are for php editor, example action template, and others. First the code templates for Twig editor don’t work, I’ll see what I can do with it. Second the code completions for with doctrine annotations are not working, probably because for now I set them as a php documentor templates, may be I’ll need to set them as a php code templates.

The code source is here: https://github.com/Monomachus/UdeviSymfonyPlugin

If you have any questions or suggestions please share them in comments, it will be great to know what you’re thinking about it.

New Udevi Symfony2 Template NetBeans plugins that will ease your life (hopefully)

Hello guys,

I got great news for you: I’ve created 2 new NetBeans plugins for increasing the speed of development with Symfony2.

First let’s talk about

Udevi Symfony2 Code Templates

Plugin details page: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42128/udevi-symfony2-code-templates

Plugin code: https://github.com/Monomachus/Symfony2CodeTemplates

So this is something I was thinking about when I started developing a real world applications - code templates, snippets of code that will help me create Symfony2 applications in NetBeans faster and more effective, I searched in Google, and I found this one (http://www.symfony-zone.com/wordpress/netbeans/).

Timo Haberkern – is the guy who created a set of code templates and exported them, he also has the CheatSheet that will help you figure out what each template does. Thank you very much Timo ! Great job !

I took those templates, modified them a little bit, removed some, added some new templates and created a new plugin. I was very happy but when I started testing it I found out that the PHP code templates in NetBeans 7.1 were not working. It was a bug in NetBeans . Here’s the original issue: http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206413

So the issue was fixed in 7.1.1 and you can finally use my plugin , but the Twig completion is still broken, I will create a new issue for the guys in NetBeans to fix it. So it doesn’t work for Twig, but still works for everything else.

I uploaded the plugin to NetBeans Plugin Portal, the verification is pending but I hope it will soon pass. I suggest you use the plugin and say what do you think about it. If there are any bugs please report them on github. Please use NetBeans 7.1.1 .  Soon I’ll make a new post with the complete list of code templates.

Udevi Symfony2 File Templates

Plugin details page: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42127/udevi-symfony2-file-templates

Plugin code: https://github.com/Monomachus/Symfony2FileTemplates

UPDATE: you can also use the Symfony2 interactive generators. More info here (http://qpleple.com/code-faster-symfony2s-interactive-generators/)

This one was a little bit harder to do, but the main goal was to avoid writing over and over pluming code that actually could be written or rewritten using file templates and/or code generation… I like this feature in the IDEs because it saves you a lot of time and the task of writing over and over even 20 keystrokes is not fun.

So I created 3 file templates by default

• Symfony2 Entity Template: This template includes generating an entity with guessed namespace: this namespace is guessed by the absolute name of the new file. The name of the table in DB is guessed upon the name of the entity with underscores between words if there are multiple words, the wizard also has the optional table name and the checkbox to create the annotation for repository or not.
• Symfony2 Controller Template: This is just a template of a new controller with guessed namespace and some useful default uses (Symfony2 Controller and Response) and a new default indexAction.
• Php Class with Namespace: This one is the most wanted for me but still not that good because it is based on supposition that all the Php classes you would need to create with namespace are inside of the ‘src’ folder.

Some templates I would also like to create but don’t know how yet

• Symfony2 Form Type: It would receive as a parameter the entity and than created in buildForm method each method with description. If field is an id automatically suppose it is hidden. I don’t know how to do it now because of the fact that I don’t know how to get metadata of a PHP entity in Java, hope Oracle guys will help me in that.
• A ViewModel for an Entity: Now when I don’t need to show everything I have in the entity to the screen I use view models. I would also need a generator that take an entity and creates a ViewModel with all the fields of the entity.

Thought about creating the template for Repository but the command line function lower helps you generate your Repository class.

app/console doctrine:generate:entities BundleNamespace

The first time you run the New file-> template from my plugin it runs slow (up to 6-8 seconds) because NetBeans need to index all the files in the plugin, next times it is faster, like 3 seconds. Still a bad performance, perhaps someone from Oracle could help me with that.

Please share what other file templates you would like to seen in this plugin, how well did the plugin go, do you have any problems, questions, concerns, ideas related to it? If any bugs found please declare them in github. Thanks a lot.

P.S. Later on will create a post about how to create a new file wizard module plugin, hope it will help someone. Are you interested in something like this ?

P.S.S. Dear guys from PHP NetBeans team, if you are reading this please make PHP Project a Public API that I could use in my plugin. There is a Java Project API in NetBeans, but nothing regards PHP, may be it is the time to change it .

Ok guys, next and hopefully the last question do you think I should unify these 2 plugins in 1 ?

Thanks a lot and happy coding !

Git and first Symfony2 project in NetBeans

This post is a part of series of posts dedicated to developping in Symfony2. If you missed the first part I highly recommend you to go and read that one before you continue with this post.

1. Setting up Windows environment for Symfony2 developing with NetBeans, XAMPP and Git

Hello, today I’ll show you how to create your first Symfony2 project in NetBeans and how to push and pull it to/from Github.

Creating the fiRst SYMFONY2 project IN NETBEANS

Ok go File –> New Project –> PHP –> PHP Application. Click Next.

Create the project directly into your XAMPP server, htdocs folder. Click Next.

We should modify the starting URL because in Symfony2 the application starting point is /web/app_dev.php like that we can assure that when we are running the application it is correctly started. Also give it a descriptive name like “FirstApp”.

 

On PHP Frameworks step select Symfony2 checkbox and click Finish. Now your application should be generated.

RUNNING APPLICATION

Now start your Apache and MySQL from XAMPP Control Panel. Go to NetBeans and click F6 (Run the application).

Hooray!!! Our first application is up and running. Now we need to configure our application, and doing this will change the app/config/parameters.ini

Now here are our new parameters.ini file

working with git. putting the site to github.

Now we need to put the site to github I will show you here the NetBeans integration with Git, but I really prefer the command line way from Git Bash (MsysGit). First I will create a repository at Github. I’ll name FirstSymfony2App.

Next we’ll add a .gitignore file to our project. But what is to ignore actually ? Well I didn’t knew it either so I found a typical ignore file for Symfony2 project. So I found it in http://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Symfony2.gitignore.

# Bootstrap
app/bootstrap*

# Symfony directories
vendor/*
*/logs/*
*/cache/*
web/uploads/*
web/bundles/*

# Configuration files
app/config/parameters.ini

Copy it and create this file in our project.

Now we can initialize the Git repository directly from NetBeans. Select the project. Right click go to Versioning –> Initialize Git Repository.

• Now we can add the files to Git by “Git –> Add” command.
• Also we can commit now by right click Project –> “Git –> Commit”.
• Also we can see already made commits by “Git –> Show History” command

Now lets push the contents of our site to Github. First we’ll need to use a remote site to which to push. Ok let’s execute Git –> Remote –> Push command.

That’s all folks, our project is on Github. You can see it here https://github.com/Monomachus/FirstSymfony2App

PULLING Project From GiTHUB AND RUNNING IT

Now let’s see the perspective of another developer who wants to use/participate in the project. For the sake of the experiment I will delete all the sources and will use MsysGit to do all Git-related stuff, though I think I could somehow use NetBeans for it.

I will clone the repository directly into XAMPP server, htdocs folder. Also I will name the folder FirstApp to avoid specific problems. Using Git Bash tool run this command

$ git clone https://Monomachus@github.com/Monomachus/FirstSymfony2App.git FirstApp

Import the project into NetBeans using File –> Open Project command. Now start Apache and MySql and run the project. We will also need to specify the project URL : http://localhost/FirstApp/web/app_dev.php .

Now we get an error:

Warning: require_once(D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp\web/../app/bootstrap.php.cache) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp\web\app_dev.php on line 17  
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp\web/../app/bootstrap.php.cache' (include_path='.;D:\xampp_server\php\PEAR') in D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp\web\app_dev.php on line 17

This error is caused by the fact that in our .gitignore file there is this line app/bootstrap*  and this means that our bootstrap.php.cache file was ignored and not committed to the Github. So the question is how can we regenerate this file ? Well, thanks to Beeton from IRC channel #symfony from Freenode, I found out that we can generate it using the

php bin/vendors install

command and that vendor/bundles/Sensio/Bundle/DistributionBundle/Resources/bin/build_bootstrap.php is the file that actually creates it.

But before you run that command please note that we also do not have the app/config/parameters.ini file because it is also in our .gitignore file. Is it really a good idea ? Yes it is if you work with other people, it means that your MySql database configuration can actually differ from your mate’s configuration.

So where do you get the sample file, well almost always in open source world the answer is Github. The link to the sample file https://github.com/symfony/symfony-standard/blob/v2.0.9/app/config/parameters.ini

Copy that file and add it to the app/config folder. Modify it and than run the command php bin/vendors install

$ php bin/vendors install
> Installing/Updating symfony
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/symfony'...
remote: Counting objects: 109718, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (35141/35141), done.
remote: Total 109718 (delta 68210), reused 102521 (delta 62139)
Receiving objects: 100% (109718/109718), 16.38 MiB | 3.49 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (68210/68210), done.
f842739d58b649ffbe6543b2eff520327373029d
HEAD is now at 3e9d937 updated VERSION for 2.0.9
> Installing/Updating twig
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/twig'...
remote: Counting objects: 9859, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2606/2606), done.
remote: Total 9859 (delta 6399), reused 9540 (delta 6122)
Receiving objects: 100% (9859/9859), 1.28 MiB | 444 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (6399/6399), done.
96596d5c7f6920dc59985c1cba531ae20715baf4
HEAD is now at 5bba149 prepared the 1.5.1 release
> Installing/Updating monolog
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/monolog'...
remote: Counting objects: 1384, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (548/548), done.
remote: Total 1384 (delta 748), reused 1322 (delta 695)Receiving objects:  94% (
Receiving objects:  96% (1329/1384), 52.00 KiB | 90 KiB/s
Receiving objects: 100% (1384/1384), 174.72 KiB | 90 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (748/748), done.
8e11234066280685e903ea6dcc0d304cd1aec9b9
HEAD is now at b704c49 Only send FirePHP headers to browser advertising support
for it in their user agent
> Installing/Updating doctrine-common
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/doctrine-common'...
remote: Counting objects: 57783, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (14404/14404), done.
remote: Total 57783 (delta 40513), reused 57588 (delta 40349)
Receiving objects: 100% (57783/57783), 15.34 MiB | 834 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (40513/40513), done.
38c854c37d20b1f67c979772089b2cd30908bcb6
HEAD is now at b886898 Release 2.1.4
> Installing/Updating doctrine-dbal
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/doctrine-dbal'...
remote: Counting objects: 59701, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (15249/15249), done.
remote: Total 59701 (delta 41906), reused 59291 (delta 41520)Receiving objects:


Resolving deltas: 100% (41906/41906), done.
2a9e9943f33610bfde4637abeafe00edd201803c
HEAD is now at ae358bd Merge remote branch 'origin/2.1.x' into 2.1.x
> Installing/Updating doctrine
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/doctrine'...
remote: Counting objects: 69262, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (17611/17611), done.
remote: Total 69262 (delta 48424), reused 68330 (delta 47567)
Receiving objects: 100% (69262/69262), 17.08 MiB | 2.61 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (48424/48424), done.
febfe35c2315a20534630aa9e5b9c72a0047f569
HEAD is now at da0e343 Release 2.1.5
> Installing/Updating swiftmailer
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/swiftmailer'...
remote: Counting objects: 9620, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3288/3288), done.
remote: Total 9620 (delta 5536), reused 9458 (delta 5388)
 (9524/9620), 4.93 MiB | 876 KiB/s
Receiving objects: 100% (9620/9620), 5.04 MiB | 889 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (5536/5536), done.
0243dc3b18c784adda72e71f6bd34f11fef69b4b
HEAD is now at 982b4c9 prepared the 4.1.5 release
> Installing/Updating assetic
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/assetic'...
remote: Counting objects: 4714, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1665/1665), done.
remote: Total 4714 (delta 2787), reused 4492 (delta 2600)Receiving objects:  99%

Receiving objects: 100% (4714/4714), 540.18 KiB | 251 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2787/2787), done.
e15a13fe4782caa6566c7f0c34ae10badaf85361
HEAD is now at f829ad2 updated changelog
> Installing/Updating twig-extensions
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/twig-extensions'...
remote: Counting objects: 297, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (148/148), done.
remote: Total 297 (delta 108), reused 270 (delta 84)Receiving objects:   7% (21/
Receiving objects:   8% (24/297)
Receiving objects: 100% (297/297), 40.25 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (108/108), done.
a05ab5ed18a51ae45f3dcc2d0c4ec9b3a6386987
> Installing/Updating metadata
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor/metadata'...
remote: Counting objects: 249, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (178/178), done.
remote: Total 249 (delta 118), reused 128 (delta 32)Receiving objects:  91% (227
Receiving objects:  93% (232/249)
Receiving objects: 100% (249/249), 33.70 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (118/118), done.
7d97f1725063f04ef1894a86740b261daf229b89
HEAD is now at 8717ad2 release 1.0.0
> Installing/Updating SensioFrameworkExtraBundle
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor//bundles/Sensio/Bundle/Fram
eworkExtraBundle'...
remote: Counting objects: 1064, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (518/518), done.
remote: Total 1064 (delta 582), reused 969 (delta 500)Receiving objects:  94% (1
Receiving objects:  96% (1022/1064), 132.00 KiB | 74 KiB/s
Receiving objects: 100% (1064/1064), 132.52 KiB | 74 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (582/582), done.
55de01d34c5b95ee07bd511d06e0b171af5fe9ba
HEAD is now at 1c7e92f fixed tests config
> Installing/Updating JMSSecurityExtraBundle
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor//bundles/JMS/SecurityExtraB
undle'...
remote: Counting objects: 1665, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (718/718), done.
remote: Total 1665 (delta 880), reused 1595 (delta 810)
Receiving objects: 100% (1665/1665), 273.00 KiB | 228 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (880/880), done.
4dc8223afa9a38cc467e0a858ef5741e6cc3987d
HEAD is now at 541a4c2 Merge pull request #36 from everzet/patch-1
> Installing/Updating SensioDistributionBundle
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor//bundles/Sensio/Bundle/Dist
ributionBundle'...
remote: Counting objects: 423, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (201/201), done.
remote: Total 423 (delta 211), reused 414 (delta 206)Receiving objects:  70% (29

Receiving objects: 100% (423/423), 60.86 KiB | 87 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (211/211), done.
f00c99854ff161b006a200d8dffa0013981d5373
HEAD is now at 20b66a4 fixed version in composer.json
> Installing/Updating SensioGeneratorBundle
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor//bundles/Sensio/Bundle/Gene
ratorBundle'...
remote: Counting objects: 651, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (302/302), done.
remote: Total 651 (delta 343), reused 609 (delta 317)Receiving objects:  77% (50
2/651), 76.00 KiB | 130 KiB/s
Receiving objects: 100% (651/651), 115.97 KiB | 130 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (343/343), done.
67bf607b41f930f93f2032d069be535ecaa21730
HEAD is now at dd37fc4 merged branch gnomii/use_filesystem_component (PR #88)
> Installing/Updating AsseticBundle
Cloning into 'D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/vendor//bundles/Symfony/Bundle/Ass
eticBundle'...
remote: Counting objects: 1741, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (544/544), done.
remote: Total 1741 (delta 1056), reused 1671 (delta 992)Receiving objects:  94%

Receiving objects: 100% (1741/1741), 229.34 KiB | 86 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1056/1056), done.
ae7f6f4dc252d37c686584576cc92f07b092d06a
HEAD is now at 41b5913 Merge pull request #27 from stof/disable_profiler
Installing assets for Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle into D:\xampp_server\htdocs
\FirstApp/web/bundles/framework
Installing assets for Acme\DemoBundle into D:\xampp_server\htdocs\FirstApp/web/b
undles/acmedemo
Installing assets for Symfony\Bundle\WebProfilerBundle into D:\xampp_server\htdo
cs\FirstApp/web/bundles/webprofiler
Installing assets for Sensio\Bundle\DistributionBundle into D:\xampp_server\htdo
cs\FirstApp/web/bundles/sensiodistribution
Clearing the cache for the dev environment with debug true

After these manipulations we can finally run the sample application.

Today we learned how to create and run your first Symfony2 project and push and pull it to/from Github.

Hope you liked it, if you have any concerns, ideas for posts, suggestions please post it here. Good coding guys!

Setting up Windows environment for Symfony2 developing with NetBeans, XAMPP and Git

[UPDATE] This is a series of post in the next one I’ll show you first Symfony2 app and how to make it work with Git. Second post link: Git and first Symfony2 project in NetBeans

Hi,

For a long time there was no sign of me here, but I hope this will change… So what do I do these days, well I want to go in Symfony2 to see how it feels like… Lots of guys were telling me PHP is way faster in development than in Java or .NET Web development so I want to try it out too.

So what do we actually need ?

XAMPP

No problem with that one. Get the latest version, install it but please don’t install MySql and Apache as services.  Than add a system environment variable like XAMPP_HOME for example and than add

;%XAMPP_HOME%\php;%XAMPP_HOME%\mysql\bin\

to Path environment variable. Now you should be able to check your PHP version from command line.

Try it now

XDEBUG based on your own phpinfo

A friend of mine showed me a wonderful site for getting your own DLL that is needed for your exactly configuration.

But first start your Apache server from your XAMPP control panel. Go to http://localhost/xampp/phpinfo.php and go get view source and copy all the HTML. Now go to http://www.xdebug.org/find-binary.php and insert the HTML into the textarea. Click on “Analyze my phpinfo output” button. And there you go you have your own DLL to download. Download it and put it into your php/ext folder

Now go to your php.ini location and add these lines + the line starting with zend_extension

xdebug.remote_enable=on
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_host=localhost
xdebug.remote_port=9000
zend_extension = D:\xampp_server\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.1.2-5.3-vc9.dll

Now your machine should be ready for debug.

INSTALL mSYSGIT – GIT FOR Windows

Go and get the latest msysgit from and install it http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list

SYMFONY2 Package

Go to http://symfony.com/download

Download the latest version in a .ZIP package. At the time of writing this it was Symfony Standart 2.0.9.zip

Make a separate folder and put this zip into it (in my case symfony2_php_sources). Also unzip it into another folder. (in my case symfony2_php_sources/Symfony).

IDE

Well we have some options like Eclipse and NetBeans also some support in PHPStorm, but I choose NetBeans 7.1.

There are a number of reasons why I chose it:

• Out of box support for YAML
• Support for Symfony2 (plugin)
• Support for Twig (templating engine in Symfony2) also plugin
• More user friendly than Eclipse (I guess someone could argue that, but I worked in Eclipse for 1 year).

So let’s starts go to  http://netbeans.org/downloads/

Add plugin for Symfony2. Go to Tools –> Plugins –> Tab Available Plugins –> click “Reload Catalog” –: in Search box input “symfony2” and press Enter. Now there should be a plugin there, called PHP Symfony2 Framework. Install it and restart NetBeans.

Add plugin for Twig. For now it is available for download from https://github.com/blogsh/Twig-netbeans/downloads as a NBM file. Download the latest file.

And install it in NetBeans. 

Now let’s tweak it a little bit. Go to Tools –> Options –> PHP.

Here we’ll have a little fun go to General tab –> Indicate your php.exe location in XAMPP. Also add in Global include path unpacked Symfony2 sources.

Go to Unit Testing tab and indicate the location of your phpunit.bat

Go to Symfony2 tab and indicate the location of the downloaded Symfony2 zip file.

Here is the cumulative actions screenshot

THAT’S ALL. Now your machine is configured.

Next time I’ll show you how to work with your first Symfony2 project and Git.

If you have any concerns, suggestions, ideas for blog posts please comment here.