Symfony, I'm confused

Can't get hands on, I'm finding lots of questions on forums

[explorador]

Hi webmasters, I've been asked to do this thing on Symfony, a php framework. I have my server with everything working, I have followed diff tutorials on how to get it right and how to test it running scripts that check the config, everything has been fine in diff ocassions and methodologies.

• One time I was running the examples and suddenly error 500 with no clue on why.
• Another time installed everything and says "all fine" but there is no way to run the php symfony command, there is no script symfony anywhere.
• Another time running sandbox projects and it works, but when I try to create an empty project ANYWHERE and I mean ANYWHERE it keeps saying "there is a project here already"

What confuses me the most is searcing the web and finding diff forums with the same questions BUT UNANSWERED. Yes there are some users saying "hey just do this and that" but you can see responses of "ok I did it but it didn't work" and no replies after that.

I tried full Linux apache mysql server
Xampp server with all the services
Wamp server with all the services

Even Wamp server with symfony already installed (this one I like the most but I can't get the command line to work) this is confusing. Any help around?

[explorador]

OMG I'm impressed by the amount of unanswered questions I'm finding on other forums. Per example: lots of questions here on WebmasterWorld are about how to do X thing with php, perl, etc. But with Symfony I'm finding lots of questions on how to get it running or configuring it because it trows ABC errors. I'm reading and answering myself: let's choose another project.

[swa66]

While I've never looked at Symphony, any such framework needs to accomplish 2 things:

- make it easier to use than native php/mysql
- make it safer to use than native php/mysql

If it fails to that for you, then why bother with it (or a framework) ?

I guess most of us actually have our own "framework" we use (at least I do).
The disadvantage is that it doesn't get peer review and as such never gets pressured under scrutiny.
The advantage is that I don't need to do monthly emergency patching cause there's a new release that fixes a now very well documented security failure.
Yes: that's security by obscurity, but I'm a pretty decent coder and I know security quite well.

In the end I guess there's a learning curve for any such framework, just as there's work to be put in to make/maintain your own. I guess there's no right generic choice. Just a personal one to make.

[Dideved]

I'll also add that in my experience, a reason why many questions go unanswered is due to a lack of sufficient information for troubleshooting. For example, "suddenly error 500 with no clue on why" doesn't help anybody figure out anything. Your best bet is to make your entire project accessible in some way (git/svn/zip... whatever), then describe the exact steps to reproduce the issue.

[explorador]

swa66: I totally agree, I also have my own "framework" and it allows me to develop quickly. I agree on security. Worked on a big company and they had security issues, not my code, never over 13 years and still standing. Custom apps are hardly the target of hackers, or at least it's confusing once basic things have been taken care of. And I agree on the rest of your post too.

Dideved: that's exactly what I found. I had all the services going with no errors, even ran the checking scripts and still found no clue on why that error appeared and can't say anything else that brings clarity to the problem. I found lots of questions without answer and found advice taken literally by many and didn't work, it's difficult. I set up a linux server 2 times and windows server 2 times too, only last time things worked and can't find sense on it.

I looked for help locally and it seems almost nobody knows how to work around this thing, I mean it's a small market or so it seems. The good thing is I see SF is being used on big projects and regarding this same paragraph: it's very exclusive and well paid, at least locally so I will be trying a bit more.