What you need for this book

Although examples of this book can be adapted and executed on any machine, my headspace is mainly around Linux and OSX platforms. For a deeper focus on the subject itself, I would suggest a Windows user to install Linux via a virtual machine such as Oracle's VirtualBox and follow the samples in a Linux environment. In Chapter 3, Setting Up the Environment, we will need an AWS account. Thanks to Amazon, there is a 1-year free tier account, which gives us enough resources to follow examples in this book. Before installing Symfony, make sure that you have the latest stable version of PHP and MySQL installed already. Having a database management application such as MySQL Workbench, HeidiSQL, or NaviCat is optional but it is nice to have them.