Why Symfony is the best framework to develop web applications in 2023?

Symfony is a high-performance PHP framework based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern. Its architecture makes heavy use of other OOP patterns and principles. At the current time (December 2022) the last stable version is Symfony 6.2.1 which requires PHP 8.1.0 or higher.

What is the MVC pattern?

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is an architectural software design pattern that separates the application's data and business logic from its user interface. This "separation of concerns" makes it easier for developers to build flexible, modular systems that can be maintained and reused more efficiently.

The MVC structure consists of three main components: the model, the view, and the controller. The model represents the data and business logic layer of the application. It contains all of the information necessary for an application to run properly including rules, constraints, relationships between objects, and other data-related elements. The view is responsible for how the data is presented to users through visual elements like text boxes, dropdown menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc. Finally, the controller serves as a bridge between the view and model layers of an application by managing input events from users and directing them according to predefined rules within the model layer.

In a nutshell, MVC makes it easier to maintain complex applications by separating different aspects into their own distinct components. It provides developers with a way to organize code in an efficient manner so they can focus on each portion without having to worry about what’s going on in other areas of an application. Furthermore, MVC allows for changes to be made quickly due to its modular nature as only one element needs to be modified instead of having to make changes throughout multiple layers at once.

The beginnings of Symfony can be traced back to 2005, when Fabien Potencier, the founder and CEO of SensioLabs, first began developing the framework. At the time, Fabien was working on several large-scale web applications for clients in a variety of industries, including e-commerce and content management systems (CMS). He realized that many of these projects were suffering from similar problems related to code complexity and cumbersome development processes. In response, he set out to create a new PHP framework that would address these issues and make it easier for developers to create complex web applications more quickly and efficiently.

After several years of development and testing, Symfony was officially released in October 2005. Since then, it has become one of the most widely used PHP frameworks, with over half a million websites using it to power their web applications.

In addition to its popularity among IT engineers, Symfony is used by many large organizations and companies, such as Yahoo!, Trivago, BlaBla, Wikipedia, and Spotify. Today, it continues to be a leading choice for developers looking to create powerful and dynamic web applications that meet the needs of modern businesses. What’s worth adding, also Sylius is an interesting example of using the Symfony PHP framework. Sylius is an open-source headless e-commerce platform for mid-market and enterprise brands that need custom solutions. We’re an official Sylius partner and we released free Sylius plugins: Google Analytics 4 Enhanced eCommerce Plugin and Sylius Baselinker Plugin which can connect e-commerce platforms with over 700 available integrations. If you want to find out more about Sylius, read other articles:

Sylius Standard vs Sylius Plus - which one is a better choice for your business and why?

Magento vs Sylius - comparison of popular e-commerce platforms

Symfony has everything that you would expect from a framework — great documentation for new users, a big ecosystem of plugins (over 1,000 packages), and everything to speed up the development of professional, fast creation and easy-to-maintain web applications. It is essentially a set of completely free and open-source components, and its libraries offer standard tools that can be used in many different projects, avoiding the same solutions for typical tasks. In our software house, we use Symfony to develop various applications like content management applications, online billing, central databases, CRMs for them, marketplaces, stock management, and more. Now, please have a look at the reasons why in my opinion you should choose Symfony for your project in 2023.

Flexible architecture

Symfony architecture allows developers to create easily supported web applications in the simplest way. Symfony includes everything that is expected from a modern framework and has a clear structure that gives you everything that's needed to easily manage your and other people's code. In addition, it has excellent performance if you know how to use it (although not always perfect of course).

Innovation

The creators of the framework made a contribution to the development of PHP as a whole, and some components of Symfony are now used in other frameworks, CMS, and well-known libraries. Many concepts of the framework are borrowed from Java (for example, the dependency injection), however, Symfony contributed to their adaptation to the PHP environment. The debug toolbar and the profiler panel are examples of tools that help programmers productively develop apps and now it is difficult to imagine writing code on PHP without them.

Compatibility

Symfony allows you to create applications that can make solutions for your business requirements, provided that these applications should work on the web platform. This framework has existing PHP standards: class naming agreements, PHPUnit standards, service naming conventions, etc. In addition, Symfony allows you to use some of its components, without using the entire framework, for example, a system of dependency injection, a routing system, a form system, ORM, and many other components. Also, the authors of the framework well used external libraries, such as Doctrine instead of reinforcing what is already working well in other projects.

Ecosystem

For Symfony, you can find a huge number of useful third-party plugins called Symfony packages (or bundles) and of course, easily install them with Composer - an officially supported package management system. Almost always you can find a package that will help in solving a particular problem. The Symfony framework also gains popularity and recognition due to the fact that it is easy to install on any Linux server (and even Windows) and achieves stable performance. It supports many databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and MongoDB. It even maintains automatic validation of forms and data input by the user to avoid SQL injections and XSS attacks.

Reputation

Since the project's launch in 2005, Symfony has been quickly adopted by PHP developers around the world. Today it offers a stable environment that is popular and internationally recognized. Symfony is also an active community of developers and contributors who are involved in the continuous improvement of the framework and related tools.

Price

Being 100% open source, Symfony automatically offers a low cost of use. Symfony allows you to develop good applications for any kind of business with the needs of your customer, giving developers full control over the configuration and customization of these applications. The framework contains a set of tools that help IT engineers test and debug applications, as well as document the development process in accordance with PHP and company standards. The only implied costs are developer price and hosting for the application.

Symfony is one of several available solutions. Considering its pros and cons, it’s the best framework to develop web applications in 2023. Its flexibility allows developers to create complex projects and work on small tasks, while its code testing and bug-fixing capabilities make the development process easier overall. If you are looking for help in developing your project - let us know! Contact us and we’ll do our best to help you. :) is one of several available solutions. Considering its pros and cons, it’s the best framework to develop web applications in 2023. Its flexibility allows developers to create complex projects and work on small tasks, while its code testing and bug-fixing capabilities make the development process easier overall. If you are looking for help in developing your project - let us know! Contact us and we’ll do our best to help you. :)