How do you organize your bundles in Symfony2 projects? [closed]

Question

I have the exact question that this guy has: http://groups.google.com/group/symfony2/browse_thread/thread/cd35132cc6972f29

I'll just copy-paste it here:

I was wondering what different ways of organizing bundles within a project people are using.

I seem to end up with either one massive bundle for a project or a lot of bundles which are closely related (dependant) to each other. eg;

I implemented my own user entity and login forms etc, but the users are linked to an organization (with some functionality). Etc ... It's mostly the entities that overlap a lot I guess ...

Do you guys split them up or dump them all in the same bundle?

Cucullate

This seems like it could lead to being a "discussion question". Also, lots of answers are equally valid here without some concrete example of the problem. Different combinations of entities could change the answer for instance: User and Organisation (assuming there are other dependencies on Organisation within the system) - Different bundles. BlogPost and BlogPostRevision - Same bundle. It's partly intuition based on the design of the system - a bundle should just encapsulate some functionality which you consider to be cohesive. – Ivaivah

Answer 1

Edit: I don't use bundles for app-specific code anymore.

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Personally I prefer to have a bundle per a section of an application. For example:

• UserBundle
• BlogBundle
• ForumBundle
• JobBundle
• StoreBundle
• etc

This is okay if the app is a mishmash of several functionalities, none of which is big enough to require a separate application and/or a subdomain. But if I was developing a big webstore applicaton, my bundles would be more specific:

• UserBundle
• ProductBundle
• CartBundle
• SearchBundle
• WishlistBundle
• etc

So, I'd say, it depends on the focus of the project. What's just a section for one project could be the core functionality of another.

And I usually have CommonBundle, where all the common stuff goes, like global CSS, images, layouts, etc.

Also there are at least two options for the backend organization:

1. each bundle has its own backend section, or
2. there is one big backend bundle.

Personally I lean towards the first option and you can read about it in my previous answer, but there are people who prefer to have a separate bundle for the whole backend — probably using one of the admin bundles.

By the way, it's perfectly okay for bundles to be interconnected — you don't have to make them all independent of each other. For example, JMSDiExtraBundle depends on the metadata library and JMSAopBundle, which in turn depends on cg-library. If you'll try to keep bundles totally independent, you'll end up with big monolithic one-bundle lumps of code.

Adalbert

Answer 2

For every project I start off with one CoreBundle, where I put everything together. Then I just develop features in it and as time goes I reevaluate it - if I might use this feature somewhere else someday (or even release to open source), I move it to a new bundle.

"Size" of the feature worth separate bundle doesn't really matter - I've seen OS bundles as big as a 1 single js file :D

One thing for sure - stuffing everything in a single bundle is bad, it goes against the whole reason why this architecture was implemented in the first place!

Gild

I am also starting using CoreBundle, unless the project is not big we don't need to create so many bundles... :) +1 – Nasa

Answer 3

My answer in the following topic can probably help you : Symfony 2 : Location of Entities

I'm not a Symfony2 master, but I think I have quite a good idea of the bundle design ; of course, there is no universal answer but you can follow some "best practices".

First of all, I don't think that big bundles are a good solution ; you doesn't split your project into applications anymore, like you did with Symfony1.4. You may ask "but what can I do with the frontend/backend logic ?" ; quite easy, use the controller !

Each bundle should refer to a module, a stone in your project's wall. You have to divide your application ; many bundles are not bad. Of course, don't do a bundle for each entities, that would be a waste of time. But imagine a blog application : you would have an User bundle, Articles bundle (which would manage posts, categories, ...), eventually a bundle for static pages, ...

It's not unlogical that your bundle are linked ; you are building a whole application, so in this case they are linked. But the keyword here is "generalization" ; your bundle should be able to be linked to others bundle, not only yours. You should be able to re-use it in others projects.

Good luck !

Living