Symfony


Symfony is a PHP web application framework and a set of reusable PHP components/libraries. It was published as free software on October 18, 2005 and released under the MIT license.

Goal

Symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications and to replace repetitive coding tasks. It's also aimed at building robust applications in an enterprise context, and aims to give developers full control over the configuration: from the directory structure to the foreign libraries, almost everything can be customized. To match enterprise development guidelines, Symfony is bundled with additional tools to help developers test, debug and document projects.
Symfony has a low performance overhead used with a bytecode cache.

Technical

Symfony was heavily inspired by the Spring Framework.
It makes heavy use of existing PHP open-source projects as part of the framework, including:
Symfony also makes use of its own components, which are freely available on the Symfony Components site for various other projects:
Symfony is sponsored by SensioLabs, a French software developer and professional services provider. The first name was Sensio Framework, and all classes were therefore prefixed with sf. Later on when it was decided to launch it as open-source framework, the brainstorming resulted in the name symfony, which matches the existing theme and class name prefixes.

Real-world usage

Symfony's own website has a comprehensive list of projects using Symfony and a showcase of websites built with Symfony.

Releases

Symfony manages its releases through a time-based model; a new Symfony release comes out every six months: one in May and one in November. This release process has been adopted as of Symfony 2.2, and all the "rules" explained in this document must be strictly followed as of Symfony 2.4.
The standard version of Symfony is maintained for eight months, whereas long-term support versions are supported for three years. A new LTS release is published.
The current LTS release is version 4.4 as per https://symfony.com/releases/4.4
ColorMeaning
RedRelease no longer supported
Ambersecurity fixes only
GreenRelease still supported
BlueFuture release

VersionRelease dateSupportPHP versionEnd of maintenanceNotes
1.0January 2007Three years≥ 5.0January 2010
1.1June 2008One year≥ 5.1June 2009Security-related patches were applied until June 2010
1.2December 2008One year≥ 5.2November 2009
1.3November 2009One year≥ 5.2.4November 2010
1.4November 2009Three years≥ 5.2.4November 2012LTS version. 1.4 is identical to 1.3, but it does not support the 1.3 deprecated features.
2.0July 2011≥ 5.3.2March 2013Last 2.0.x release was Symfony 2.0.25
2.1September 2012Eight months≥ 5.3.3June 2013More components are part of the stable API.
2.2March 2013Eight months≥ 5.3.3November 2013Various new features.
2.3June 2013Three years≥ 5.3.3May 2016The first LTS release, only three months development, normally six months.
2.4November 2013Eight months≥ 5.3.3July 2014The first 2.x branch release with complete backwards compatibility.
2.5May 2014Eight months≥ 5.3.3January 2015
2.6November 2014Eight months≥ 5.3.3July 2015
2.7May 2015Three years≥ 5.3.9May 2018LTS release.
2.8November 2015Three years≥ 5.3.9November 2018LTS release.
3.0November 2015Eight months≥ 5.5.9July 2016
3.1May 2016Eight months≥ 5.5.9January 2017
3.2November 2016Eight months≥ 5.5.9July 2017
3.3June 2017Eight months≥ 5.5.9January 2018
3.4November 2017Three years≥ 5.5.9November 2020LTS release.
4.0November 2017Eight months≥ 7.1.3July 2018Dropping support for HHVM
4.1May 2018Eight months≥ 7.1.3January 2019
4.2November 2018Eight months≥ 7.1.3July 2019
4.3May 2019Eight months≥ 7.1.3January 2020
4.4Nov 2019Three years≥ 7.1.3November 2022LTS release.
5.0Nov 2019Eight months≥ 7.2.5July 2020Live released by Fabien Potencier during his Keynote at SymfonyCon Amsterdam . Current release.
5.1May 2020Eight months≥ 7.2.5January 2021
5.2Nov 2020Eight months≥ 7.2.5July 2021Next release.