.. index::
single: Web Server
The preferred way to develop your Symfony application is to use :doc:`PHP's internal web server </setup/built_in_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 Apache or Nginx.
When using Apache, you can configure PHP as an :ref:`Apache module <web-server-apache-mod-php>` or with FastCGI using :ref:`PHP FPM <web-server-apache-fpm>`. FastCGI also is the preferred way to use PHP :ref:`with Nginx <web-server-nginx>`.
The public directory
The public 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 controller (index.php) lives.
The public directory serves as the document root when configuring your
web server. In the examples below, the public/ directory will be the
document root. This directory is /var/www/project/public/.
If your hosting provider requires you to change the public/ directory to
another location (e.g. public_html/) make sure you
:ref:`override the location of the public/ directory <override-web-dir>`.
The easiest way is to install the Apache recipe by executing the following command:
$ composer require symfony/apache-pack
This recipe installs a .htaccess file in the public/ directory that contains
the rewrite rules.
Tip
A performance improvement can be achieved by moving the rewrite rules from the .htaccess
file into the VirtualHost block of your Apache configuration and then changing
AllowOverride All to AllowOverride None in your VirtualHost block.
The minimum configuration to get your application running under Apache is:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName domain.tld
ServerAlias www.domain.tld
DocumentRoot /var/www/project/public
<Directory /var/www/project/public>
AllowOverride All
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from All
</Directory>
# uncomment the following lines if you install assets as symlinks
# or run into problems when compiling LESS/Sass/CoffeeScript assets
# <Directory /var/www/project>
# Options FollowSymlinks
# </Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>Tip
If your system supports the APACHE_LOG_DIR variable, you may want
to use ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ instead of hardcoding /var/log/apache2/.
Use the following optimized configuration to disable .htaccess support
and increase web server performance:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName domain.tld
ServerAlias www.domain.tld
DocumentRoot /var/www/project/public
<Directory /var/www/project/public>
AllowOverride None
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from All
FallbackResource /index.php
</Directory>
# uncomment the following lines if you install assets as symlinks
# or run into problems when compiling LESS/Sass/CoffeeScript assets
# <Directory /var/www/project>
# Options FollowSymlinks
# </Directory>
# optionally disable the fallback resource for the asset directories
# which will allow Apache to return a 404 error when files are
# not found instead of passing the request to Symfony
<Directory /var/www/project/public/bundles>
FallbackResource disabled
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
# optionally set the value of the environment variables used in the application
#SetEnv APP_ENV prod
#SetEnv APP_SECRET <app-secret-id>
#SetEnv DATABASE_URL "mysql://db_user:db_pass@host:3306/db_name"
</VirtualHost>Tip
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}]In Apache 2.4, Order Allow,Deny has been replaced by Require all granted.
Hence, you need to modify your Directory permission settings as follows:
<Directory /var/www/project/public>
Require all granted
# ...
</Directory>For advanced Apache configuration options, read the official Apache documentation.
To make use of PHP-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 php7.1-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/php/php7.1-fpm.sock
; or listen on a TCP socket
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000If 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 or Unix socket,
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
# for Unix sockets, Apache 2.4.10 or higher
# SetHandler proxy:unix:/path/to/fpm.sock|fcgi://dummy
</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/public/$1
# If you run your Symfony application on a subpath of your document root, the
# regular expression must be changed accordingly:
# ProxyPassMatch ^/path-to-app/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/project/public/$1
DocumentRoot /var/www/project/public
<Directory /var/www/project/public>
# enable the .htaccess rewrites
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
# uncomment the following lines if you install assets as symlinks
# or run into problems when compiling LESS/Sass/CoffeeScript assets
# <Directory /var/www/project>
# Options FollowSymlinks
# </Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/project_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/project_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>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 php7-fcgi .php
Action php7-fcgi /php7-fcgi
Alias /php7-fcgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php7-fcgi
FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php7-fcgi -host 127.0.0.1:9000 -pass-header Authorization
DocumentRoot /var/www/project/public
<Directory /var/www/project/public>
# enable the .htaccess rewrites
AllowOverride All
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
# uncomment the following lines if you install assets as symlinks
# or run into problems when compiling LESS/Sass/CoffeeScript assets
# <Directory /var/www/project>
# Options FollowSymlinks
# </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/php7-fcgi -socket /var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock -pass-header AuthorizationThe minimum configuration to get your application running under Nginx is:
server {
server_name domain.tld www.domain.tld;
root /var/www/project/public;
location / {
# try to serve file directly, fallback to index.php
try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location ~ ^/index\.php(/|$) {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
include fastcgi_params;
# optionally set the value of the environment variables used in the application
# fastcgi_param APP_ENV prod;
# fastcgi_param APP_SECRET <app-secret-id>;
# fastcgi_param DATABASE_URL "mysql://db_user:db_pass@host:3306/db_name";
# When you are using symlinks to link the document root to the
# current version of your application, you should pass the real
# application path instead of the path to the symlink to PHP
# FPM.
# Otherwise, PHP's OPcache may not properly detect changes to
# your PHP files (see https://github.com/zendtech/ZendOptimizerPlus/issues/126
# for more information).
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;
# Prevents URIs that include the front controller. This will 404:
# http://domain.tld/index.php/some-path
# Remove the internal directive to allow URIs like this
internal;
}
# return 404 for all other php files not matching the front controller
# this prevents access to other php files you don't want to be accessible.
location ~ \.php$ {
return 404;
}
error_log /var/log/nginx/project_error.log;
access_log /var/log/nginx/project_access.log;
}Note
Depending on your PHP-FPM config, the fastcgi_pass can also be
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000.
Tip
This executes only index.php in the public directory. All other files
ending in ".php" will be denied.
If you have other PHP files in your public directory that need to be executed,
be sure to include them in the location block above.
Caution!
After you deploy to production, make sure that you cannot access the index.php
script (i.e. http://example.com/index.php).
Note
By default, Symfony applications include several .htaccess files to
configure redirections and to prevent unauthorized access to some sensitive
directories. Those files are only useful when using Apache, so you can
safely remove them when using Nginx.
For advanced Nginx configuration options, read the official Nginx documentation.