Symfony and MM 2.x Tips

A few tips for working with MM 2.x under Symfony — as a starting point or as a quick reference.

All console commands are run from the Contao installation directory — i.e. where the composer.json file is located. Before all calls, first switch to that directory:

cd /var/www/my-contao

Then make sure that the same PHP version is running on the console as for the website (see the Contao Manager under Tools > PHPINFO). You can check the console version with:

php -v

If the PHP version is not the same, you must call the commands with a path to the PHP binary. The path is shown e.g. during the Contao Manager system check or in the provider’s documentation/wiki.

/usr/bin/php82 -v

Composer Update

The following command initiates an update:

/usr/bin/php82 web/contao-manager.phar.php composer update -v

or with memory and execution time allocation:

/usr/bin/php82 -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=900 public/contao-manager.phar.php composer update -v

or for older installations using the web path:

/usr/bin/php82 -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=900 web/contao-manager.phar.php composer update -v

The -v, -vv, or -vvv parameters provide different levels of output detail. The additional --dry-run parameter performs a dry run as a test.

After an update, run the install tool if necessary so that database changes are applied (often forgotten :D).

The composer.phar should be updated regularly — run the following command to do so:

/usr/bin/php82 web/contao-manager.phar.php self-update

The database migration can be triggered as follows — see schema manager:

/usr/bin/php82 vendor/bin/contao-console contao:migrate

Determining Package Versions

When reporting errors or asking developers for support, the installed version of an extension is important. This can be determined via the package name, e.g. for DC_General:

/usr/bin/php82 public/contao-manager.phar.php composer show | grep dc-general

With:

/usr/bin/php82 public/contao-manager.phar.php composer show

all packages are listed.

For a development version obtained e.g. from the “EAP”, there is no version number yet — but you can find the current commit number in composer.lock. Search the file e.g. for "name": "metamodels/core". The commit number is in the reference node — the first eight characters are sufficient, e.g. 8da81418.

Clearing the Cache

Clear the Contao cache after making changes:

“Soft” (recommended):

/usr/bin/php82 vendor/bin/contao-console cache:clear --env=prod
/usr/bin/php82 vendor/bin/contao-console cache:warmup

or the “hard way”:

rm -rf var/cache/{dev,prod}

which deletes “everything” from dev and prod.

Symfony Toolbar

The Symfony toolbar makes it easier to display template values and debug during the development of a project with MetaModels.

Debug mode can be activated from the backend or Contao Manager, or permanently via an entry in the environment file .env or .env.local with the entry:

APP_ENV=dev

Permanent activation should only be done locally or on otherwise protected pages.

In debug mode, Contao caching is also disabled so you don’t need to clear the cache as often — but this also means the page may “look different”. Additionally, the Symfony debug toolbar is shown in the browser.

If something in the source code needs to be debugged, use Symfony’s debug() function — the output then appears in the debug toolbar and can be viewed via the “crosshair icon”.

For debugging templates, there is a description here: Debug Templates.

To inspect the SQL calls e.g. of a “Custom SQL” filter rule, go to “Doctrine” in the debug toolbar — all SQL calls are listed there. Using the browser’s search and some identifiable parts such as the table name, the query can usually be found quickly. The toolbar provides the SQL code in various formats, making it easy to copy the query into phpMyAdmin for testing.

Disabling Warnings in Debug Mode

When viewing debug output, a warning message may sometimes prevent the display from appearing. The warning may come from a theme or another extension and have nothing to do with MetaModels. To still get your desired output in the Symfony toolbar, you can suppress warnings. Add the following entry to config.yml:

// config/config.yml
framework:
  profiler:
    only_exceptions: true
# or
contao:
    error_level: 8181