How to start local server with symfony 5 or downgrade version to 4.4?

Question

I started a new project in new Symfony 5 and i can't open my local server.

On Symfony 4.4 the command PHP bin/console server:run is OK,

But with Symfony 5 the command appears not to be defined...

C:\Users\Chris\Code\api-test> php bin/console server:run
Command "server:run" is not defined.
Do you want to run "server:dump" instead?  (yes/no) [no]:

So how to downgrade or start the local server?

Answer 1

The Web Server Bundle is not included with Symfony 5.

But you can simply require it and install it separately.

E.g.:

composer require symfony/web-server-bundle 4.4

It is important that you specify the version (4.4), because otherwise it will attempt to install version 5 (which does not exist, and it will fail).

After that you'll be able to run bin/console server:run as you used to do.

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Otherwise, you may use the Symfony CLI as well. This is an executable binary which includes the Symfony Server by default. Then you may run symfony server:start or the better know alias symfony serve to start the local webserver.

Read more about Symfony's server here.

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You can also use the built-in web server in the PHP runtime. Just go to your project's root directory and run:

php -S localhost:8000 -t public/

It's not a fully featured webserver, but for developing purposes it is usually more than enough.

Answer 2

For running a local web server you can now use Symfony Client, or simply 'Symfony'.

1. Download the binary and install it globally.

2. Open a terminal and run once: symfony server:ca:install. This will install a local SSL certificate authority that allows you to run the local webserver on https://.

3. Inside the terminal, move into your project directory and run symfony serve. A local webserver will start; by default on https://localhost:8000/.

If you wish to run the webserver on another port you can use symfony serve --port=8080 (in this case port 8080). For the most useful commands Symfony Client has to offer, simply run symfony. To see all available commands run symfony help.