One of Symfony’s greatest strengths is its upgrade process. Thanks to the
backward compatibility promise and deprecation system, major upgrades
are smooth, predictable, and, dare I say it, enjoyable!
Our newest tutorial is now available – and completely free:
In this course, we take a real Symfony application and guide it through
the entire upgrade process. You’ll learn how to identify and fix
deprecations, modernize dependencies, prepare for PHP 8.4, and upgrade to
Symfony 8 with confidence.
By the end, you’ll have a practical, repeatable process that you can apply
to your own applications – making future upgrades smaller, safer, and much
less stressful.
What This Course Covers
This course follows a real-world Symfony application through the upgrade
process, some of the things you’ll learn include:
- Understanding Symfony’s backward compatibility promise
- Finding and fixing deprecations
- Using automated tests to upgrade safely
- Updating Composer dependencies
- Preparing your application for Symfony 8 and PHP 8.4
- Modernizing Doctrine integrations
- Cleaning up deprecated configuration and APIs
- Verifying third-party bundle compatibility
As a bonus chapter,
we also cover something that’s become increasingly
important for every PHP developer: dependency security.
Recent advances in AI-assisted security auditing have dramatically
increased the number of vulnerabilities being discovered across the entire
software ecosystem. That’s good news – issues are being found and fixed
faster than ever – but it also means it’s more important than ever to stay
on top of dependency updates.
In the bonus chapter, you’ll learn how to use Composer’s built-in
composer audit command to identify known vulnerabilities, understand
security advisories, and keep your applications secure as part of your
regular maintenance workflow.
Who Is This For?
This course is perfect if you:
- Maintain Symfony applications that need to stay current
- Want a repeatable process for framework upgrades
- Feel intimidated by major version upgrades
- Want to better understand Symfony’s upgrade philosophy
- Care about keeping your dependencies secure
Whether you’re upgrading your first application or your fiftieth, this
course will help make the process predictable and approachable.
What’s Next on SymfonyCasts?
If this course leaves you wanting more, we’re already releasing the next
chapter in your Symfony journey.
- Symfony Security: The Basics –
learn the fundamentals of Symfony’s security system, including
authentication, login forms, user providers, password hashing, CSRF
protection, and more.
And coming soon:
- E2E Testing –
a practical guide to browser testing, including authentication,
JavaScript interactions, debugging tools, and complete user flows from
end to end.
In the meantime, check out a couple of our recent blog posts:
-
Keeping Doctrine Entities Honest –
Should your Doctrine entities always represent valid domain objects?
We explore a different approach that separates persistence from user
input using Symfony’s ObjectMapper. -
Meet Brontie, Your AI Companion –
Meet our new AI-powered course assistant that can answer questions about
the current chapter, explain concepts, and help you learn faster without
leaving the course.
Happy upgrading!
