The "Symfony Demo Application" is a reference application created to show how to develop Symfony applications following the recommended best practices.

• PHP 5.3 or higher;
• PDO-SQLite PHP extension enabled;
• and the usual Symfony application requirements.

If unsure about meeting these requirements, download the demo application and browse the http://localhost:8000/config.php script to get more detailed information.

First, install the Symfony Installer if you haven't already. Then, install the Symfony Demo Application executing this command anywhere in your system:

$ symfony demo

# if you're using Windows:
$ php symfony demo

If the demo command is not available, update your Symfony Installer to the most recent version executing the symfony self-update command.

NOTE

If you can't use the Symfony Installer, download and install the demo application using Git and Composer:

$ git clone https://github.com/symfony/symfony-demo
$ cd symfony-demo/
$ composer install --no-interaction

If you have PHP 5.4 or higher, there is no need to configure a virtual host in your web server to access the application. Just use the built-in web server:

$ cd symfony-demo/
$ php app/console server:run

This command will start a web server for the Symfony application. Now you can access the application in your browser at http://localhost:8000. You can stop the built-in web server by pressing Ctrl + C while you're in the terminal.

NOTE

If you're using PHP 5.3, configure your web server to point at the web/ directory of the project. For more details, see: http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/configuration/web_server_configuration.html