Configuring a Web Server

The preferred way to develop your Symfony application is to use PHP’s internal web server. However, when using an older PHP version or when running the application in the production environment, you’ll need to use a fully-featured web server. This article describes several ways to use Symfony with Apache2 or Nginx.

When using Apache2, you can configure PHP as an Apache module or with FastCGI using PHP FPM. FastCGI also is the preferred way to use PHP with Nginx.

The Web Directory

The web directory is the home of all of your application’s public and static files, including images, stylesheets and JavaScript files. It is also where the front controllers live. For more details, see the The Web Directory.

The web directory services as the document root when configuring your web server. In the examples below, the web/ directory will be the document root. This directory is /var/www/project/web/.

Apache2 with mod_php/PHP-CGI

For advanced Apache configuration options, see the official Apache documentation. The minimum basics to get your application running under Apache2 are:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName domain.tld
    ServerAlias www.domain.tld

    DocumentRoot /var/www/project/web
    <Directory /var/www/project/web>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from All
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

注解

If your system supports the APACHE_LOG_DIR variable, you may want to use ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ instead of /var/log/apache2/.

注解

For performance reasons, you will probably want to set AllowOverride None and implement the rewrite rules in the web/.htaccess into the VirtualHost config.

If you are using php-cgi, Apache does not pass HTTP basic username and password to PHP by default. To work around this limitation, you should use the following configuration snippet:

RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

警告

In Apache 2.4, Order allow,deny has been replaced by Require all granted, and hence you need to modify your Directory permission settings as follows:

<Directory /var/www/project/web>
    # enable the .htaccess rewrites
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Apache2 with PHP-FPM

To make use of PHP5-FPM with Apache, you first have to ensure that you have the FastCGI process manager php-fpm binary and Apache’s FastCGI module installed (for example, on a Debian based system you have to install the libapache2-mod-fastcgi and php5-fpm packages).

PHP-FPM uses so-called pools to handle incoming FastCGI requests. You can configure an arbitrary number of pools in the FPM configuration. In a pool you configure either a TCP socket (IP and port) or a unix domain socket to listen on. Each pool can also be run under a different UID and GID:

; a pool called www
[www]
user = www-data
group = www-data

; use a unix domain socket
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock

; or listen on a TCP socket
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Using mod_proxy_fcgi with Apache 2.4

If you are running Apache 2.4, you can easily use mod_proxy_fcgi to pass incoming requests to PHP-FPM. Configure PHP-FPM to listen on a TCP socket (mod_proxy currently does not support unix sockets), enable mod_proxy and mod_proxy_fcgi in your Apache configuration and use the SetHandler directive to pass requests for PHP files to PHP FPM:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName domain.tld
    ServerAlias www.domain.tld

    # Uncomment the following line to force Apache to pass the Authorization
    # header to PHP: required for "basic_auth" under PHP-FPM and FastCGI
    #
    # SetEnvIfNoCase ^Authorization$ "(.+)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1

    # For Apache 2.4.9 or higher
    # Using SetHandler avoids issues with using ProxyPassMatch in combination
    # with mod_rewrite or mod_autoindex
    <FilesMatch \.php$>
        SetHandler proxy:fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000
    </FilesMatch>
    # If you use Apache version below 2.4.9 you must consider update or use this instead
    # ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/project/web/$1
    # If you run your Symfony application on a subpath of your document root, the
    # regular expression must be changed accordingly:
    # ProxyPassMatch ^/path-to-app/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/project/web/$1

    DocumentRoot /var/www/project/web
    <Directory /var/www/project/web>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

PHP-FPM with Apache 2.2

On Apache 2.2 or lower, you cannot use mod_proxy_fcgi. You have to use the FastCgiExternalServer directive instead. Therefore, your Apache configuration should look something like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName domain.tld
    ServerAlias www.domain.tld

    AddHandler php5-fcgi .php
    Action php5-fcgi /php5-fcgi
    Alias /php5-fcgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi
    FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi -host 127.0.0.1:9000 -pass-header Authorization

    DocumentRoot /var/www/project/web
    <Directory /var/www/project/web>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

If you prefer to use a unix socket, you have to use the -socket option instead:

FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi -socket /var/run/php5-fpm.sock -pass-header Authorization

Nginx

For advanced Nginx configuration options, see the official Nginx documentation. The minimum basics to get your application running under Nginx are:

server {
    server_name domain.tld www.domain.tld;
    root /var/www/project/web;

    location / {
        # try to serve file directly, fallback to app.php
        try_files $uri /app.php$is_args$args;
    }
    # DEV
    # This rule should only be placed on your development environment
    # In production, don't include this and don't deploy app_dev.php or config.php
    location ~ ^/(app_dev|config)\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
    }
    # PROD
    location ~ ^/app\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
        # Prevents URIs that include the front controller. This will 404:
        # http://domain.tld/app.php/some-path
        # Remove the internal directive to allow URIs like this
        internal;
    }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/project_error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/project_access.log;
}

注解

Depending on your PHP-FPM config, the fastcgi_pass can also be fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000.

小技巧

This executes only app.php, app_dev.php and config.php in the web directory. All other files will be served as text. You must also make sure that if you do deploy app_dev.php or config.php that these files are secured and not available to any outside user (the IP checking code at the top of each file does this by default).

If you have other PHP files in your web directory that need to be executed, be sure to include them in the location block above.