Phar File

Caution

Using the Silex phar file is deprecated. You should use Composer instead to install Silex and its dependencies or download one of the archives.

Installing

Installing Silex is as easy as downloading the phar and storing it somewhere on the disk. Then, require it in your script:

<?php

require_once __DIR__.'/silex.phar';

$app = new Silex\Application();

$app->get('/hello/{name}', function ($name) use ($app) {
    return 'Hello '.$app->escape($name);
});

$app->run();

Console

Silex includes a lightweight console for updating to the latest version.

To find out which version of Silex you are using, invoke silex.phar on the command-line with version as an argument:

$ php silex.phar version
Silex version 0a243d3 2011-04-17 14:49:31 +0200

To check that your are using the latest version, run the check command:

$ php silex.phar check

To update silex.phar to the latest version, invoke the update command:

$ php silex.phar update

This will automatically download a new silex.phar from silex.sensiolabs.org and replace the existing one.

Pitfalls

There are some things that can go wrong. Here we will try and outline the most frequent ones.

PHP configuration

Certain PHP distributions have restrictive default Phar settings. Setting the following may help.

detect_unicode = Off
phar.readonly = Off
phar.require_hash = Off

If you are on Suhosin you will also have to set this:

suhosin.executor.include.whitelist = phar

Note

Ubuntu’s PHP ships with Suhosin, so if you are using Ubuntu, you will need this change.

Phar-Stub bug

Some PHP installations have a bug that throws a PharException when trying to include the Phar. It will also tell you that Silex\Application could not be found. A workaround is using the following include line:

require_once 'phar://'.__DIR__.'/silex.phar/autoload.php';

The exact cause of this issue could not be determined yet.

ioncube loader bug

Ioncube loader is an extension that can decode PHP encoded file. Unfortunately, old versions (prior to version 4.0.9) are not working well with phar archives. You must either upgrade Ioncube loader to version 4.0.9 or newer or disable it by commenting or removing this line in your php.ini file:

zend_extension = /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so