Symfony andContent Management

Jani Tarvainen, 2015/09/17

About me• I'm Jani Tarvainen and I've been making websites for a while• I work for Exove, we do a lot of CMS work there with WP, Drupal and

eZ• Please stay awake and draw your own conclusions• Me on Twitter: @velmu• This event on Twitter: @symfony_fi

Agenda• What is content management• Brands and Communities• A closer look at Symfony and CMSes• Bolt• Drupal 8• eZ Platform

• Content Management in the Future

My Agenda• I work with (LAMP) content management• Diversity is good• I should do more things outside of LAMP

• Routine is good...• ...but repeating is for robots

• PHP CMSes have strong product communities• Try different things to gain perspective

What is Content Management• A commodity• Bulk of web development• Easy to get started with• Working with CMS

• Hard to Master• Building a CMS

• Boring, but enables exciting things

Brands and Communities• North America of Content Management• Elsewhere there be dragons• Parallel dimensions outside of LAMP

• To be a viable option, you need to be known... and used!• Pure technical excellence is worth nothing• To me Symfony is above all, a strong Brand• Genuinely high quality, trusted, widespread...

About developers• Developers gonna• face the same basic problems• do it themselves, because they can do it right• have to keep learning new mad skillz

• PHP has reached the maturity level where code sharing is easy• developers learned to share

Meanwhile in China…1. What's the #1 Search in China?2. What's the #1 Forum software in China?3. What's the #1 Microblogging site in China?4. What's the #1 CMS in China?

Meanwhile in China…1. Baidu2. Discuz!3. Sina Weibo4. DedeCMS

Symfony can be your US Dollar in the LAMP CMS world; A universally accepted currency• I would like a bottle of water• That will be 4 eZ Francs, please• Do you accept Drupal Kronor? I've got 7• Sacrebleu! eZ Francs ONLY!• How about 2 Symfony Bucks?• I'm sure we can figure something out…

Symfony and Content Management• Symfony in it's different forms are everywhere• as Components, Silex, Full Stack• in CMSes: Drupal, eZ, Bolt, Concrete 5, Pagekit...

• Symfony is technically capable• Symfony did not invent / is not• YAML, Twig, Console, Composer, modern PHP…

A closer look at Symfony and CMSes• Bolt CMS (hobby experience)• A CMS built from Scratch on Silex

• Drupal 8 (hobby experience)• Uses Symfony Components for key functionalities

• eZ Platform (work experience)• Built on Symfony 2 Framework

Bolt CMS• https://github.com/bolt/bolt• Installation• Quick look at templates• Config

Drupal 8• https://www.drupal.org/drupal-8.0• Quick look at internals• Importing / Exporting configurations with YAML• Twig templates

eZ Platform• https://github.com/ezsystems/ezplatform• Content, User and Media management for Symfony2• Site configuration and mapping• Proven multilingual concepts• Integrated Solr search• Semantic content model

eZ Platform features• Integrates with Symfony2 user sessions• Use same session for CMS and Apps

• Language mapping• www.site.fi to fin-FI (fi)• www.site.no to nor-NO (no)

• Extendable REST API• Pluggable storage• Integrate functionality with separate models

eZ Platform, key bundles• Doctrine DBAL for DB abstraction• Flysystem for file storage to local, AWS, etc.• Stash for Caching with Redis, Memcached• FOSHttpCache for cache tagging, etc. for Varnish• Liip Imagine for image manipulation

Same skillz, different tools• Bolt, Drupal 8, eZ Platform all share• HttpKernel• Twig templates• YAML configs...

• Recycle your skills from blog to a clustered personalised news portal• Don't forget to keep learning and looking for the best option!

Content Management in the Future• A melting pot of content feeds?• Automatic personalization? Algorithm decides what _you_ see?• Content Repositories?• JCR is NoSQL, rising but not significant yet

• A full front end CMS?• All logic in client, only persistence via server• You can ever only really trust the server• Is it any better? Is it what things just "will be”?

Graph Databases in Content Management?• Graph DBs Rising in popularity, mainstream for some use-cases• Neo4j was created for a CMS• GraphQL from Facebook• Can give you an alternative view to your data, but won't turn your bad

content to gold• Learn more tomorrow at "Thinking in Graphs" at Fraktio HQ

Links• Symfony and Content Management: Comparing Bolt, Drupal 8 and eZ• Prototyping Web Apps with Structr and Neo4j• Symfony has no model, but many• eZ Platform and a Graph Database?• GraphQL is SQL for Knowledge, not Data• Thinking in Graphs video stream• Learn Symfony with Silex, the Demo App and the Best Practices Book• The Worst Programming Language Ever

No questions?