Symfony development
Symfony is an Open-Source PHP Web Application Framework which EtonDigital has migrated to and is now at the forefront of Symfony development. After developing and maintaining a variety of platforms the development team selected Symfony because it enables us to develop web applications in a focused, coordinated way; the PHP framework uses many of the best ideas set forward by Ruby on Rails, without the complexity of learning another language.
The Symfony framework is based on PHP5 and uses the enhanced object oriented features that this brings. We encourage a development practice that creates reusable components as this speeds up code development and reduces bugs through the reuse of tested and trusted code.Two of the key features that aid the structuring, readability and maintainability of object-oriented code are the Model View Controller (MVC) and the Object Relational Mapper (ORM).
Interest in Symfony Development has increased since del.icio.us announced it developed its new version on the Symfony framework. Another big bust to Symfony framework credibility came with Yahoo! Answers.
EtonDigital Featured Projects built on Symfony:
- Synapse - is a professional, invitation only, social network for London Specialty Schools.
- LetsLoop - a social network for music. Connect with your friends to discover, share and discuss music together.
- Skipso - community and marketplace entirely focused on sustainable innovation
- StudentBox - An online community focused on students and their way of life.
- StoryVault - Video based social network
- Lost In London - Social network for language schools students in London
Symfony MVC
The Model View Controller architecture enables us to create well designed code that allows the programming and html teams to focus on their specialist areas.The model layer encapsulates the data layer, which may consist of databases (MySQL, Microsoft SQLServer or others), WSDL/SOAP data providers, XML/RSS/Atom feeds. This layer also contains the business logic for the web application.
The controller layer connects the view layer to the business logic; generally this consists of handling requests from the visitor, retrieving or storing information using the business logic in the model layer, and preparing data for display by the presentation layer.The presentation, or view, layer provides the layout for the data in the website. Usually this consists of HTML/CSS, but equally this could be targeted for mobile phones in WML or similar.
Object Relational Mapper (ORM)
The Object Relational Mapper (ORM) allows us to write code without directly accessing the database; no knowledge of SQL is necessary. Of course, performance optimisation can still be carried out to ensure the site is highly responsive; but ease of development is improved through the global use of objects.
Symfony support
The strength of Symfony framework lies in the large community of developers now writing web applications in the language. The framework is constantly being improved, and features that do not fit directly within the framework are contributed as plugins that can be added to an application to enhance functionality.
The full list is too long to provide here, but it includes everything from payment gateway APIs, user management, CMS, search, RSS feeds, News, Blog, Forum, SEO, fancy javascript effects, and many more. Many of these will be featuring in the new social networking websites that we are building!
More Symfony features:
- simple templating and helpers
- cache management
- smart URLs
- scaffolding
- multilingualism and I18N support
- Ajax support
- enterprise ready
Read Why symfony still has plenty to offer blog entry.
Symfony PHP Web Framework Homepage: www.symfony-project.com
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