Angularjs on a symfony2 application

Question

I\'m working on a SF2 application that uses a lot of javascript on the front end.

SF2 provides me a good way of building a nice REST app, manage my database with doc

Answer 1

I've been trying to build a single page application using Symfony and angularjs. I used Symfony2 with the FOSRestBundle to build an Restful API and Angularjs to build the frontend.

By itself, AngularJs does not need Symfony2 framework to build a application as long as it has an API to talk with. However, I found Symfony2 useful in these area:

1. Translation in the template. the data in the API payload does not need translation in most cases. Using Symfony I18N support for the template makes perfect sense.

2. Loading of Option lists. Say you have a country list with 200+ options. You can build an API to populate a dynamic dropdown in angularjs, but as these options are static, you can simply build that list in twig.

3. Preloading data/content. You can preload template or JSON data in the hosting page if you like

4. Take advantage of the authentication feature of Symfony. You can used the same authenticated session to the API for the application, too. No need to use Oauth.

5. The Assetic bundle is very useful to urglyfy and minify bunches of Javascript files used by AngularJs

However, I did find the following challenges:

1. PHP session locking for multiple Ajax calls. Need a better way to free the php session by calling 'session_write_close()' or use a database for session. Where is the best place in Symfony to call that 'session_write_close' function so that we can free the session for more ajax calls as soon as possible ?

2. Reloading/Syncing loaded data Say you have a list of items (like ebay items) showing in a browser, you want to update that list in client's browser when the list was updated on the server side. You might need to poll the list periodically or use something like Firebase. Firebase is an overkill in most cases, polling is not nice looking to me, but what is the best way to achieve this ?

Please add you comments. thanks