Comparative analysis of a selected version of the Symfony framework

This article is about research during which selected versions of the Symfony programming framework were compared in terms of their performance. The following versions of the framework were analysed: 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 LTS, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 LTS. For the purpose of the research, a simple test application in PHP was developed in ten variants corresponding to selected versions of the framework and consisting of 17 fragments of code – methods in the class, each of which operates on one basic component of Symfony. The application prepared in this manner was subject to performance tests in a two-stage experiment. After the experiment, the quantitative analyses were conducted in which the following aspects were taken into consideration: the average values of execution times and the average amounts of memory usage for specific code fragments for individual versions of the Symfony framework components and the average time of execution and demand for memory for the entire tested application. The obtained results for each code fragment representing a given component were visualized in the forms of graphs. The performed analyses showed that the best version of the Symfony programming framework in terms of performance is version 4.1.