Things to like about Symfony so far

A few days into learning Symfony and so far I'm keen on

  • configuration check to start with
  • good MVC separation
  • ability to generate initial MVC components from a database definition
  • form validation to match database constraints
  • wrapping various HTTP functions and globals in a request and response object
  • separate dev and prod environments
  • ajax integration - like defining a div as draggable in PHP
  • explicit support for initial and test data

Things not to like

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Practical Symfony

Well having found the Definitive Guide to Symfony a bit uninspiring I've spent a bit of time on the "Practical Symfony" book - online.

http://www.symfony-project.org/jobeet/1_2/Propel/en/

So far it's great - the first "three days" lessons went by pretty quick, and I'm glad I'd done some background reading.

Putting the two things together I feel I've probably got enough understanding  to start writing a basic app - which is exactly what I need to do to make sense of a load of reading.

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The Definitive Guide to Symfony

cover of The Definitive Guide to Symfony The Definitive Guide to Symfony (Expert's Voice in Open Source)
Fabien; Zaninotto, François Potencier
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£35.89

buy from amazon

 

I want to like this book because, having read it I'm still enthusiastic about learning symfony.

But normally when I read a book like this I feel inclined to try out bits of code as I go - and the layout of this book just isn't conducive to that.

I really don't like the way that the section on "the basics" doesn't even cover database connections, and code generation isn't covered till chapter 14.

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