How does composer know symfony environment - symfony

Question

i try to deploy an app in "integration" environment but after the "composer update" command, the parameters.yml file generated doesn't contains may integration parameters
Here is what i did :
I created a "config_integ.yml" file in app/config with :
# app/config/config_integ.yml
imports:
- { resource: parameters_integ.yml }
- { resource: config.yml }
framework:
profiler: { only_exceptions: false }
the parameters_integ.yml file contains parameters for integration environment. example of the beggining :
parameters:
database_host: localhost
database_port: null
database_name: test_integ
database_user: root
the parameters.yml.dist contains these parameters with default values :
parameters:
database_host: 127.0.0.1
database_port: ~
database_name: symfony
database_user: root
How can i tell to composer to take the parameters_integ.yml file to build the parameter.yml file ? Because i will have a prod environment after, i can't write my parameters in parameters.yml.dist file.
Tell me if you need other informations
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

1) You should include composer.json and composer.lock in your VCS
2) You should not include parameters.yml in your VCS
3) When deploying Sf application you should use composer install
http://symfony.com/doc/current/deployment.html#c-install-update-your-vendors
difference between composer install and composer update (+ composer.lock): https://blog.engineyard.com/2014/composer-its-all-about-the-lock-file
4) I can think of a few ways for creating parameters.yml in the integration environment:
you manually create parameters.yml file and place it beside parameters.dist.yml
or
if there is no parameters.yml or parameters.yml has some missing parameters, when you run composer install, you will be prompted to enter missing parameters and parameters.yml will be created/updated during the composer install process
or
you can have an app/config/parameters folder containing parameters_prod.yml and parameters_integ.yml files, and one of those files is automatically copied into parameter.yml file during deployment (most complicated solution)
If you want integration environment to be accessible via a browser, you should also create a front controller for it. Copy the web/app.php file to web/app_integ.php and edit the environment to be integration:
// web/app_integ.php
// ...
// change just this line
$kernel = new AppKernel('integ', false);
// ...
More info at https://symfony.com/doc/current/configuration/environments.html#creating-a-new-environment
And the answer to the question from the title, "How does composer know symfony environment" - I think composer has no idea about Sf environment :)
The composer has require-dev option for packages that you do not need in your production, packages required for running tests (phpunit for example), some debugging stuff during development, etc.
For an example this is how one of my composer.json files looks like:
...
"require-dev": {
"sensio/generator-bundle": "^3.0",
"symfony/phpunit-bridge": "^3.0",
"doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle": "^2.3",
"nelmio/alice": "^2.1",
"deployer/deployer": "^4.0"
},
...
If I run composer install --no-dev, these packages won't be installed in the vendor directory.
But, how Sf knows when to include/omit some packages in the app.
That is defined inside AppKernel.php.
In the composer.json, under "require-dev" key I defined that I don't want doctrine fixtures in production.
So, inside AppKernel.php I put these lines of code:
if (in_array($this->getEnvironment(), ['dev', 'test'], true)) {
...
$bundles[] = new Doctrine\Bundle\FixturesBundle\DoctrineFixturesBundle();
}
And if I run my app in production mode, there will not be DoctrineFixturesBundle.

Answer 2

Best practice is to set your default parameters in your app/config/parameters.yml.dist file.
See this link:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/best_practices/configuration.html#canonical-parameters
When you run:
composer update
it will use the parameters.yml.dist and overwrite the parameters.yml with the values in the dist file.