With the Windows Azure Websites platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which was released as a preview to a general audiance in June last year, PHP applications can be deployed to Azure with as much as a Git push to a remote repository. At the same time Microsoft released a new and much improved PHP SDK, which integrates with all the Azure webservices.
I blogged about deployment with Composer on Azure Websites last November and since then I have been working with Microsoft to improve Symfony2 support on Windows Azure by developing and releasing the AzureDistributionBundle. This is a new version of the bundle and contains the following improvements:
- Full support for the PHP SDK through the DependencyInjection container
- Installation of project dependendencies using Composer during deployment. I will blog about the Composer support in much more detail in the next days, because this information is not only valuable for Symfony2 projects.
- a full demo application (derived from symfony-standard) to show PHP, Symfony & Azure integration
- documentation of the Windows Azure Websites deployment process and possiblities for PHP configuration
- a Stream Wrapper for Azure Blob Storage, currently being reviewed for inclusion into the Azure PHP SDK itself.
You can install both the Bundle or the Demo application via Composer. For the Demo application call:
$ php composer.phar create-project beberlei/symfony-azure-edition
The README includes more information about how to deploy the demo to your Azure websites account.
The bundle can be installed using the following composer.json:
{
"require": {
"beberlei/azure-distribution-bundle": "*"
},
"repositories": [
{
"type": "pear",
"url": "http://pear.php.net"
}
],
}
Registering PEAR is necessary, because the Azure PHP SDK depends on some PEAR components.