Doctrine setup

ORM bundle

Doctrine is the database layer of Symfony. One meta package, the ORM pack, installs the bundle, the configuration files, and the console commands:

Install the ORM pack

composer require symfony/orm-pack

[OK] The ORM pack is installed and configured

You run this command once per project. Later lessons use the commands it installs.

DATABASE_URL

Connection details live in the .env file as a single URL. Driver, user, password, host, and database name all sit inside DATABASE_URL:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:secret@127.0.0.1:5432/blog?serverVersion=16"

Swap the values to match your own database server. The course examples use a database named blog.

Create the database

Build the empty database from that URL with one console command. Run it inside the project folder:

Create the database from DATABASE_URL

php bin/console doctrine:database:create

Created database `blog` for connection named default

The command only creates the database itself. Tables arrive later through migrations.

Check the connection

That success message proves three things at once: the URL parses, the server runs, and the credentials work.

A connection error at this step almost always means a typo in the URL or a stopped database server. Compare the error message with the value in .env before changing anything else.

Next: Entities

Article author: Arthur Isaev