Getting started with silex

Remarks#

This section provides an overview of what silex is, and why a developer might want to use it.

It should also mention any large subjects within silex, and link out to the related topics. Since the Documentation for silex is new, you may need to create initial versions of those related topics.

Installation or Setup

Consider following directory structure to comply with best practices:

[ProjectRoot]
    |---[app]
    |    |---[resources]
    |    routes.php
    |---[web]
    |    |---[resources]
    |    |    |---[css]
    |    |    |---[img]
    |    |    |---[js]
    |    .htaccess
    |    index.php
    |---[src]
    |---[var]
    |---[vendor]
    composer.json
    composer.lock

Composer is the most flexible way to get started with Silex. Create a directory to host your Silex application (Named ProjectRoot above), cd to that directory and run the following command to create a composer.json file:

composer require silex/silex "~2.0"

This will add some files and directories into vendor directory, under ProjectRoot.

After that, all you need to do is require the vendor/autoload.php file and create an instance of Silex\Application in your index.php file under ProjectRoot/web. After your controller definitions (routes.php), call the run method on your application:

ProjectRoot/web/index.php

require_once __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';

$app = new Silex\Application();
require_once __DIR__ . '/../app/routes.php';

$app->run();

ProjectRoot/app/routes.php

$app->get("/", function () {
    return new \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response('Hello World!');
});

ProjectRoot/web/.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    Options -MultiViews
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Hello world

Create web directory in same folder as the vendor directory. Create index.php file in web directory with contents

<?php
// web/index.php

require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';

$app = new Silex\Application();

$app->get("/", function () {
    return "Hello world!";
});

$app->get("/hello/{name}", function ($name) use ($app) {
    return "Hello ".$app->escape($name);
});

$app->run();

To start app using PHP built-in server run

php -S localhost:8080 -t web

Now you can open the browser and navigate to https://localhost:8080, to see

Hello World!

We also defined one dynamic route. Navigate to https://localhost:8080/hello/<YOUR_NAME> replacing <YOUR_NAME> with your own name to be greeted by your first Silex app.