Now that Drupal 8 is starting to use Drupal components, I thought it would be in my best interest to try installing Symfony 2 and find use cases for this framework. From the start, what youseed is that it does nothing even after you have created a Bundle. Yaml is entirely foreign. But after going through the Symfony 2 Cook Book, things started to make sense. I love the command line tools and composer.
Wow, and to see it all in OOP, sorry Drupal, but it just makes so much more sense, and I don't feel like I need to belt my head up against a brick wall and then jump off a cliff. Below are some points that I found interesting when installing Symfony2.
- You have to tell Symfony2 that it is production. In Drupal, you move your codebase.
- When you first install Symfony 2, the UI gives you no functionality, whereas Drupal gives you a lot of basic functionality out of the box.
- The Apache or Nginx virtual host index URL needs to point to web/app.php.
- It is all OOP, and there is no point and click to create your website or application structure.
- All parts of Symfony 2 can be used independently of Drupal is needed.
I know that Drupal is a CMS/Framework and Symfony 2 is a straight framework and comparing these two different tools sounds crazy. But understanding the foundation of Drupal 8 will assist in developing modules. I have found this already with how the structure works and namespacing. It does take some effort, but I would recommend it.