Workshops

In this workshop, I’ll share practical knowledge we’ve developed at Printify over the past three years, where we transformed a large legacy Symfony project into a clean architecture and built two more greenfield applications following the same principles.

Thanks to Clean Architecture, our Symfony-based services became highly maintainable, adaptable to change, and remarkably stable, even during high-load periods like the Holiday Season.

But what is Clean Architecture?
It's a set of architectural patterns and principles designed to help you build software that is:
- maintainable in the long term,
- resilient to both technological and business change,
- scalable and cost-efficient,
- and structured in a way that enables productive team collaboration.

This workshop will be fully hands-on and Symfony-specific. We’ll work on a Symfony-based RealWorld Example Conduit app that has been intentionally written in a “framework way”. Together, we will:
- audit the application and identify key architectural pain points,
- design a Clean Architecture foundation tailored to Symfony's ecosystem,
- refactor the application incrementally and safely, applying principles such as Dependency Inversion and boundary separation.

By the end of the session, you'll have a clear roadmap for applying Clean Architecture principles to existing Symfony projects, regardless of how messy the starting point is.

Prerequisites:
- Basic understanding of SOLID principles (especially Dependency Inversion and Liskov Substitution),
- Experience with Symfony's DependencyInjection component,
- You have Docker Desktop/Rancher Desktop installed; you know how to run the Docker Compose project.

Join me for a practical dive into architectural transformation and elevate the quality of your Symfony applications!

Based on Fabien Potencier's book Symfony: The Fast Track (fully updated for Symfony 8.1), this intensive 2-day training teaches you how to build a production-ready application from scratch using today's best practices.

Whether you are new to Symfony or an experienced dev updating your skills, you will master modern architecture without the bloat:
- Zero-Node Frontend: Build snappy, SPA-like UIs with Symfony UX and AssetMapper—no Node.js or node_modules required.
- Native AI Integration: Moderate spam automatically using Symfony AI (LLMs via Messenger) with safe human-in-the-loop fallbacks.
- Modern Stack & Testing: Harness Scheduler for recurring tasks, Zenstruck Foundry for fast object factories, and Upsun for zero-friction cloud deployments.

On the menu: Symfony UX, Symfony AI, AssetMapper, Scheduler, Zenstruck Foundry, Messenger, Upsun, and modern Symfony 8.1 idioms.

Doctrine ORM is the de facto standard ORM in Symfony applications. In recent years Doctrine DBAL & ORM have seen new major releases and with that breaking changes and updated recommendations on their usage. In this wokshop we want to introduce you to current best practices with Doctrine ORM and DBAL, as well as a deep dive of some of the more advanced features in Doctrine. In a series of exercises in a demo application we will explore these functionalities in practice.

While this workshop does not focus on modernization/upgrading to the most recent major versions, we will discuss some of the breaking changes and how to tackle them, if this is relevant to participants. Please note, that basic familiarity with Symfony & Doctrine are assumed. If you have no prior experience with Doctrine (or similar ORMs), we will try to accommodate as best as we can.

Over two days, let’s explore how one can leverage Kubernetes to deploy their Symfony application.
After a couple of concept refreshes, we’ll start with a simple single-pod and gradually improve it to incorporate more Kubernetes concepts, ultimately reaching an almost production-ready application.

Requirements:
- A basic knowledge of and use of Docker and containers is required
- Be fluent with the use of Symfony, the command line, and local container management
- A basic knowledge of Kubernetes can be helpful, but is not required
- A local Kubernetes deployment accessible (minikube, Docker Desktop, etc)

With Symfony AI a new ecosystem for AI-integrated or agentic applications in PHP got launched and with this workshop we want to dive into the components, understand concepts and build different features from simple use-cases to agentic workflows. No prior knowledge other than Symfony and Docker is needed.

Symfony UX allows you to create your frontends with Symfony, Twig and very minimal Javascript, rather than a full blown Javascript framework. In this workshop, we will explore the various features Symfony UX has to offer:
* Hotwire Turbo for that smooth single page app feeling, including Turbo Frames for optimized updates
* Hotwire Turbo Streams for server initiated communication
* Stimulus controllers for lightweight Javascript needs
* Twig components for self-rendering PHP classes
* Live components for dynamic interfaces with all logic in the Symfony backend

In the world of cybersecurity there is always a threat lurking. Waiting in the shadows for the perfect moment to strike. You can sit back and relax and hope for the best and react when it’s too late… or before they even think about making a move you can take the control over and see everything coming from miles away. In this session, you’ll dive deep into the art of threat modeling an essential skill that allows you to anticipate risks, identify vulnerabilities, and develop a proactive defense strategy.

Mike will guide you through the process and show you why threat modeling is an offer you simply can’t refuse. You’ll learn how to analyze threats with precision, build effective threat scenarios and develop a mindset that stays one step ahead of the attackers. Ultimately you won’t only understand threat modeling you’ll lead it with confidence.

Join Mike in the family business, hone your expertise and become the Godfather of Threat Modeling. In this game only the wise and the prepared will survive.

A Symfony app in production always looks fine… until it doesn’t. Latency spikes. CPU climbs. Memory behaves weirdly. Nobody knows why.

Take a Symfony application behind FrankenPHP and make it observable in minutes. No heavy stack. No endless setup. Just the signals that actually matter to us as developers.

We tap into what the runtime and the server already expose, then turn that into something useful when debugging real production issues.

We end up with a simple, working observability setup: request visibility, latency tracking, resource usage, and runtime signals you can actually rely on in production.

The goal is simple: understand what your app is really doing in production without spending days wiring tools together. Make observability enjoyable.

With cyber threats on the rise, security is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. From GDPR compliance to protecting user data, developers are on the front lines of application safety.

Join this hands-on workshop to learn how to reinforce your application's defenses. We will focus on hardening your authentication system and exploring different authentication strategies to see which ones best fit your projects.

Agenda Overview:
* Deep dive into Symfony Security & essential bundles
* Best practices (and how to apply them)
* Auditing your code: identifying the gaps
* Improving your existing authentication flow

We’ll adapt the pace to the group, with the possibility of diving into advanced security concepts if time permits.

Prerequisites:
* Docker >= 23.0+
* Castor 1.0+
* Your favorite IDE (I will be using PHPStorm)
Missing one of these? Don't stress, we’ll find a way to get you up and running!

Have you ever wanted to learn about Test-Driven Development (TDD) but never had the chance to learn it properly?

Do you think TDD only slows you down?
You don't know what to do when getting stuck?
Attend this workshop and learn what TDD really is by practice, and add this methodology to your developer toolkit

In this workshop, you'll learn about:

- How to develop a complex feature from scratch by applying TDD using PHPUnit
- The anatomy of a clean test: Arrange, Act, & Assert.
- Going faster. Demystify the myth that TDD only slows you down.
- And many other useful tricks...