What is the new Symfony 3 directory structure?

Question

I just created a new Symfony 2.5 project with a regular composer command:

php composer.phar create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition path/ 2.5.0 

The Terminal asks me:

Would you like to use Symfony 3 directory structure?

What is this Symfony 3 directory structure? I have never seen it before... Is it new since 2.5?

What are the benefits to using it?

Is there any way to replicate this directory structure?

Answer 1

I want to use the new Symfony 3 directory structure, but I don't see the question?

The question Would you like to use Symfony 3 directory structure? has been removed when creating a new project due to the confusion it caused. You can force the use of the directory structure using the following:

If you prefer the new structure, you can add the environment variable SENSIOLABS_ENABLE_NEW_DIRECTORY_STRUCTURE to your .bashrc or .bash_profile like so:

Make all future projects ask for the new structure

# .bash_profile # ALL new composer installs will ask `Would you like to use the new Symfony3 strucure?` export SENSIOLABS_ENABLE_NEW_DIRECTORY_STRUCTURE=true 

Make ONLY THIS project ask if we want to use the new structure.

If you wanted it for a particular project only (a one off), you can use:

SENSIOLABS_ENABLE_NEW_DIRECTORY_STRUCTURE=true composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition path/ "2.5.*" 

If the environment variable SENSIOLABS_ENABLE_NEW_DIRECTORY_STRUCTURE is set and set to true, composer will ask if you want to use the new directory structure.

Continue reading below for all the changes between the Symfony2 and Symfony3 directory structure.

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What is the new Symfony 3 directory structure?

(and how does it effect me & my workflow)

I looked into this by creating 2 projects, one with symfony-2.5.0 directory structure, one with symfony-3 (directory structure change only).

Make one of each project:

# say `N` to `Would you like to use Symfony 3 directory structure?` $ composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition symfony-2.5.0/ 2.5.0  # say `Y` to `Would you like to use Symfony 3 directory structure?` $ composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition symfony-3/ 2.5.0 

So now we have the 2 different directories we want to compare.

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Find the difference

You can diff between the 2 directories using:

$ diff -rq symfony-2.5.0/ symfony-3/ /** (Returned from the diff) Files symfony-2.5.0/.gitignore and symfony-3/.gitignore differ Files symfony-2.5.0/.travis.yml and symfony-3/.travis.yml differ Only in symfony-2.5.0/app: bootstrap.php.cache Only in symfony-2.5.0/app: cache Only in symfony-2.5.0/app: console Only in symfony-2.5.0/app: logs Only in symfony-2.5.0/app: phpunit.xml.dist Only in symfony-3/bin: console Only in symfony-3/bin: symfony_requirements Files symfony-2.5.0/composer.json and symfony-3/composer.json differ Only in symfony-3/: phpunit.xml.dist Only in symfony-3/: var Files symfony-2.5.0/vendor/autoload.php and symfony-3/vendor/autoload.php differ Files symfony-2.5.0/vendor/composer/autoload_real.php and symfony-3/vendor/composer/autoload_real.php differ Files symfony-2.5.0/web/app.php and symfony-3/web/app.php differ Files symfony-2.5.0/web/app_dev.php and symfony-3/web/app_dev.php differ */ 

This shows the files that differ in the 2 versions.

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Breakdown of diff

Here's a breakdown of everything in the diff.

# These files still exist in both versions (with different content) .gitignore .travis.yml composer.json vendor/autoload.php vendor/composer/autoload_real.php web/app.php web/app_dev.php  # The following files have been removed from 2.5.0 # {RemovedFile2.5}      |  {ReplacedWith3.0} app/cache               |  var/cache app/logs                |  var/log app/bootstrap.php.cache |  var/bootstrap.php.cache app/console             |  bin/console app/phpunit.xml.dist    |  phpunit.xml.dist  # The following files are new in 3.0 bin/symfony_requirements # run via CLI 

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Benefits of the Symfony 3 directory structure

The new directory structure has a number of benefits, all of which are minor and may require minimal changes to your workflow.

PHPUnit

phpunit can be run from the project root without having to explicitly specify the path of the configuration file.

# Symfony2 phpunit -c app/phpunit.xml  # Symfony3 (no need to specify the configuration file location) phpunit 

Binary Executables

All binary executable files are now all located in a single location - the bin directory (similar to a unix-like os).

# you can update your `PATH` to include the `bin` directory PATH="./bin:$PATH"  # From your project root you can now run executables like so: console symfony_requirements doctrine  # else with no `PATH` update bin/console bin/symfony_requirements bin/doctrine 

The new /var directory

The new /var directory contains the files to which the system writes data to during the course of its operation (similar to a unix-like os).

This also makes it easier to add permissions, the entire /var directory should be writable by your webserver. You can follow the Symfony2 guide for setting permissions (substituting app/cache && app/logs with var), any other files you want to write locally could also be located here.

# default symfony3 `var` directory var/bootstrap.php.cache var/cache var/logs 

Symfony requirements check

Running symfony_requirements will output mandatory & optional environment configurations.
e.g:

******************************** * 'Symfony requirements check' * ********************************  * Configuration file used by PHP: /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini  /** ATTENTION ** *  The PHP CLI can use a different php.ini file *  than the one used with your web server. *  To be on the safe side, please also launch the requirements check *  from your web server using the web/config.php script. */  ** Mandatory requirements ** '  OK       PHP version must be at least 5.3.3 (5.5.11 installed)  OK       PHP version must not be 5.3.16 as Symfony wont work properly with it  OK       Vendor libraries must be installed  OK       var/cache/ directory must be writable  OK       var/logs/ directory must be writable  OK       date.timezone setting must be set  OK       Configured default timezone "Europe/London" must be supported by your installation of PHP  OK       json_encode() must be available  OK       session_start() must be available  OK       ctype_alpha() must be available  OK       token_get_all() must be available  OK       simplexml_import_dom() must be available  OK       APC version must be at least 3.1.13 when using PHP 5.4  OK       detect_unicode must be disabled in php.ini  OK       xdebug.show_exception_trace must be disabled in php.ini  OK       xdebug.scream must be disabled in php.ini  OK       PCRE extension must be available ' ** Optional recommendations ** '  OK       xdebug.max_nesting_level should be above 100 in php.ini  OK       Requirements file should be up-to-date  OK       You should use at least PHP 5.3.4 due to PHP bug #52083 in earlier versions  OK       When using annotations you should have at least PHP 5.3.8 due to PHP bug #55156  OK       You should not use PHP 5.4.0 due to the PHP bug #61453  OK       When using the logout handler from the Symfony Security Component, you should have at least PHP 5.4.11 due to PHP bug #63379 (as a workaround, you can also set invalidate_session to false in the security logout handler configuration)  OK       You should use PHP 5.3.18+ or PHP 5.4.8+ to always get nice error messages for fatal errors in the development environment due to PHP bug #61767/#60909  OK       PCRE extension should be at least version 8.0 (8.34 installed)  OK       PHP-XML module should be installed  OK       mb_strlen() should be available  OK       iconv() should be available  OK       utf8_decode() should be available  OK       posix_isatty() should be available  OK       intl extension should be available  OK       intl extension should be correctly configured  OK       intl ICU version should be at least 4+  OK       a PHP accelerator should be installed  OK       short_open_tag should be disabled in php.ini  OK       magic_quotes_gpc should be disabled in php.ini  OK       register_globals should be disabled in php.ini  OK       session.auto_start should be disabled in php.ini  OK       PDO should be installed  OK       PDO should have some drivers installed (currently available: mysql, sqlite, dblib, pgsql) ' 

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Conclusion

Looks like a good tidy up by Sensio Labs, all the above changes make perfect sense, they should be easy to implement when upgrading from 2.5 to 3.x, these will probably be the least of your problems!

Read the docs

Symfony 2.x => 3.0 Upgrade docs here
Symfony 3.0 The Architecture

Release Date for Symfony 3

It looks far off looking at the Release process (worth a read):

http://symfony.com/doc/current/contributing/community/releases.html

_{(source: symfony.com)}