Symfony2: a PHP MVC framework for a java developer

I have just spent an interesting day implementing a basic symfony2 application.

I applied for a new contract, and the potential client asked me to show my skills in the framework they use, Symfony2. As it has been quite a while since I used PHP properly, I am somewhat rusty.

So imagine my delighted surprise, when I realised that Symfony2 has gone out there and stolen all the good parts of the frameworks they can find, mostly from Java.

• IOC and dependancy injection
• Routing with annotations
• Entities with annotations for ORM
• Controllers
• Templating
• Validation by config
• and good testing

All out of the box.

Brilliant, basically nothing new for me to learn, just details about how they implement it.
All in all, a very productive day spent reading and implementing it.

I hated symfony1, it is probably why I quit using php.
My recommendation now... try Symfony2, especially if you are a java/spring/etc programmer.

I have found quite a few interesting bugs/problems, but those go in another post.