How can I create separate web directories for each application in symfony?

Question

For instance, I have two applications: 'frontend' and 'backend'. I'd like my /web directory to be set up so that '/web/frontend' serves the 'frontend' assets, and '/web/backend' serves the 'backend' assets without having to go modify all the image paths, etc.

Answer 1

From the Symfony Documentation, doing this in each app's config.php should work [example is showing apps/backend/config/config.php]

sfConfig::add(array(
  'sf_web_dir'      => SF_ROOT_DIR.'/web/backend',
  'sf_upload_dir'   => SF_ROOT_DIR.'/web/backend'.sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir_name'),
));

For some reason, this method doesn't work. If you take a look at all the variables defined inside sfConfig, you'll notice that you have to change more than sf_web_dir and sf_upload_dir to get things working.

One option would be to manually override the all variables inside sfConfig that point to the web directory inside each app's config.php. To see a list of all the variables, try

<?php echo var_dump(sfConfig::getall()); ?>

Your other option (The way I've done it before) would be to do it in the Apache configuration. Your virtual host settings for backend would look something like

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName backend.dev
  DocumentRoot "PATH_TO_SYMFONY_PROJECT/web/backend"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Alias /sf /usr/local/lib/php/data/symfony/web/sf
  <Directory "/usr/local/lib/php/data/symfony/web/sf">
  AllowOverride All
  Allow from All
  </Directory>
  <Directory "PATH_TO_SYMFONY_PROJECT/web/backend">
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Then you will need to copy backend.php, backend_dev.php [ and possibly index.php if backend is your default enviroment ] to /web/backend, and in each one of those files, change

define('SF_ROOT_DIR',    realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/..'));

to

define('SF_ROOT_DIR',    realpath(dirname(__FILE__).'/../..'));

and you should be good. I prefer this method, but if you don't have virtual hosts setup, you might not have this option.