How can I bootstrap Symfony into a standalone script?

Question

(I hope 'bootstrap' is the correct term...)

I have a Symfony 1.4 project in which I'm using a PHP script that mostly contains Javascript (I'm including this script with a simple <script src="/js/myStuff.js"></script> tag). I need to use some Symfony classes, helper methods, and variables from within the script (specifically the sfConfig class, url_for() helper method, and the $sf_request variable.) I'm at a loss as to how to achieve this. I tried copying the code from one of the front controllers into the script, but that ended up outputting the contents of my application's layout file.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can do what you want by using something like this to create a symfony context:

require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/../config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php');

$configuration = ProjectConfiguration::getApplicationConfiguration('frontend', 'prod', false);
$context = sfContext::createInstance($configuration);

To use url_for, you will also need to either load/include the Url helper, which can be done like:

sfContext::getInstance()->getConfiguration()->loadHelpers('Url');

I think there's a better approach though:

Serve this javascript file as symfony action if you need access to symfony - there's nothing that says you can only serve html through symfony.

Check out the block here entitled Javascript As An Action for an explanation ...

http://www.symfony-project.org/jobeet/1_2/Doctrine/en/18#chapter_18_user_feedback