Symphony.

I have been using Symphony for some pretty great websites so far, but all of them without laying a finger on Symphony’s core to make something work.

So I was wondering what percentage of average Symphony user does the same, or tends to hack the system for specific needs? And what are the most common requirements you need to hack Symphony for?

I only hack the core (i.e. files within /symphony) to apply patches if I’m not going to do a full upgrade. But 90% of projects I do require a level of customisation to Events and Data Sources.

Most of the sites I’ve done with Symphony are rather tame so I haven’t really had to mess with anything yet aside from the occasional bug fix someone’s told me to make.

That being said, I’m starting to play around with Symphony more to learn more about what can be done with it so we’ll see how long that remains the case.

So far I only had to touch the core for bug fixing but I nearly always customize my data sources and events (I really can recommend Nick’s SymQL for this purpose). If I need anythings special I write small extensions (cookie management, special fields).

I really can recommend Nick’s SymQL for this purpose.

I know from a reliable source that it is going to be replaced by something awesome. :-)

Something even more awesome? Great! What is it?

Getting more work done inside Symphony is on my to do list. I know my way around php so that should be fun. Thing is I simply did not need to up to this point, every time a nice extension or a solid ‘no’ to the client came to the rescue ;).

I am mostly trying to get a picture of the type of things people run into and which can’t be done without xslt + the available extensions right now, what are the major stumbling blocks considering your average pretty complex website?

Most custom code revolves around:

• member management (logins)
• deleting entries using Events
• tighter security or more complex Events
• more complex Data Sources joining sections together in more optimised ways, or doing calculations such as SUM, AVE, COUNT; searching content; and dynamic filters
• more complex URL structures (e.g. nesting parameters within a URL such as mysite.com/page/:param/another-page/:param
• caching

They are almost always site-specific customisations, which solve a specific requirement to that one site. Otherwise I’d be solving them with generic extensions ;-)

@nickdunn - A bit of self promotion here, but I think you could handle your complex URL structures with my URL router plugin. And if you can’t, let me know and I’ll try to do some more work on it!!

Getting back to the original point - I think the lean core and the intelligent plugin architecture are 2 of the strong points of the symphony platform. The plugin architecture allows an awful lot of modification without having to butcher the core. The length and breadth of the extension list are testament to that.

@nickdunn - A bit of self promotion here, but I think you could handle your complex URL structures with my URL router plugin. And if you can’t, let me know and I’ll try to do some more work on it!!

Yes indeed! Although in the time since you released it, I haven’t needed to do any funky URL stuff so I haven’t given it a road test yet.

@robphilp: I concur that your URL Router extension rocks. I’m using it for exactly the use case that Nick mentions above. I.e., remapping page-based URLs in Symphony to a more RESTful structure. It works perfectly.

Thanks for the feedback all and that list is very insightful nickdunn. To be honest I have been making pretty complex(ish) websites with Symphony wihtout running into any of these stumbling blocks. But igonorance is bliss I guess ;).

I’m guessing this is the stuff that makes most extensions in the end, the URL router is something that sounds very useful indeed.

@robphilp: I concur that your URL Router extension rocks. I’m using it for exactly the use case that Nick mentions above. I.e., remapping page-based URLs in Symphony to a more RESTful structure. It works perfectly.

Wow, thanks a lot, I am hugely flattered by the praise!! It only really came about so I had an extension to develop and learn the process.

If you would care to volunteer some of your regexes, as examples, to the router extension thread, it might help others understand how to use it. Regex can be a sticking point for people (me included), so it’d be great to share.