Symfony Certification

If you are developing applications using Symfony, you may have heard about the Symfony certification, which is an exam that validates your skills and knowledge about the Symfony framework and components.

And, you might have asked yourself: What is exactly the Symfony certification? What's the purpose of being certified? How long does it take? Is there any tips and tricks for efficient revising?

This is precisely what this article will cover!

What is made of?

Topics

The Symfony certification is split into 15 topics. There are 12 of them about Symfony itself:

• Symfony Architecture
• Controllers
• Routing
• Templating with Twig
• Forms
• Data Validation
• Dependency Injection
• Security
• Console
• Automated Tests
• Miscellaneous (which contains less structuring stuff such as Serializer, Messenger, ExpressionLanguage, Dotenv, Runtime, ...)

Plus - and this is one of the reasons the Symfony certification is considered a good certification - Symfony considers that you cannot be a good Symfony developer if you are not a good PHP developer or a good web developer. That's why Symfony added the 3 following topics to the certification:

• PHP
• HTTP
• HTTP Caching

For more details on the topics and their content, you can have a look at certification.symfony.com

Questions

The certification is made of 75 questions, which implies that each topic is composed of 5 questions. These questions can be materialized following these three types:

• Single choice: only one answer is valid for the question. Therefore only one checkbox will be checkable.
• Multiple choice: several responses can be valid for the question. So multiple checkboxes will be checkable.
• True/False: you'll have to say if a statement is true or false.

So, you won't be asked to write anything during that certification, not any code or text.

Here are some examples (that came to my mind, they are of course not part of the real certification):

1. What is the aim of the prepare method in HttpFoundation's Response?

• To convert the Response to a string that is compatible with the HTTP response message format.
• To send the Response to the client.
• To ensure that the Response is compliant with RFC 2616.

2. Which of these headers don’t belong to the Request?

• Accept
• Accept-Charset
• Encoding
• Accept-Language
• Vary

3. The check_path route needs to be behind a firewall.

• True
• False

Timing

The whole exam lasts 90 minutes. Therefore, you have 1 minute and 12 seconds for each question.

More than 1 minute for a single question is quite long, so you can afford the time to read carefully the question and the answers. Indeed, take that time to make sure that you have understood the question and that there isn't any obvious trap.

Plus, please note that it is possible to skip a question during the exam and go back to it later on. So if you're not sure about your answer, skip it, as you'll for sure have time to think about it later with a fresher mind.

90 minutes is long enough to allow you to loop many times over all the questions. On your first loop, you should concentrate on answering questions that look obvious to you. Then you will have even more time to spend on each remaining question. If you have any doubt you cannot clear, for example, if you feel a trap but do not see it, you should keep your first answer which is usually the good one, or skip it and give it another try on the next loop.

How does it take place?

First, you'll need to have a voucher, which is about € 250.

Then, there is no need to go to any exam center, you can be certified at home! Indeed, the Symfony certification is taken fully online.

And because you're taking an exam at home, the computer camera and microphone will be enabled and the entire screen will be recorded to make sure you aren't cheating in any way.

During the ninety-minute exam, you'll have to answer seventy-five questions, which are written in English. After submitting your answers, Symfony will inspect your camera, microphone, and screen records, looking for any cheat, and then send you the results.

If you succeed, you'll receive an e-mail, telling you which grade you did manage to get, which can be either Advanced or Expert, depending on your score.

A little aside about the certification version

The Symfony certification is an exam about the usage of a specific version of Symfony. It is indeed possible to be certified on Symfony 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

A "Symfony X" certification is about the X.0 version. For example, the Symfony 6 certification will be about the 6.0 version, not the 6.1 nor the 6.4.

This could appear obvious but it is quite important. Indeed there is something that you might not know yet, and you will for sure learn it while studying for the certification 😉:

A X.0 version of Symfony is the very same as the [X-1].4 version but without any backward compatibility layer nor deprecation

So, even if it does look weird, a Symfony 6 certified developer knows everything about Symfony 5 and its deprecations, not Symfony 6 and its evolutions.

What's the point of being certified?

The Symfony certification can be considered as a testament that you deeply know Symfony. Indeed your proficiency is validated through a rigorous examination process, ensuring that you are well-versed in the framework's nuances.

Therefore, the Symfony certification is a kind of concrete proof of your expertise. And that proof materializes your worth in the job market, allowing you to negotiate higher salaries or increase your Average Daily Rate. This is basically because employers recognize the added value that a certified Symfony developer can bring to their team.

Beyond that, the Symfony Certification comes with a beautiful Symfony Connect badge, a virtual representation of your accomplishments, allowing you to brag a little bit to your colleagues.

Plus, while preparing yourself to pass the certification, you'll discover new techniques, tools, and methodologies that can be seamlessly integrated into your daily workflow. The insights gained during the certification studies become tools in your arsenal, increasing the quality of your web development projects.

Furthermore, revising for the certification is a great way to engage with the Symfony community. Indeed, by reading the documentation and testing stuff, you surely spot code issues or parts of documentation that aren't clear enough. This will allow you to contribute to the codebase, and enhance the documentation. Therefore, your journey becomes a collaborative effort, that benefits the entire Symfony ecosystem 🚀.

How long does the preparation take?

The timeline for Symfony Certification preparation is highly personal. It depends on factors like your prior experience with Symfony, your existing knowledge, and of course, your preferred method of revision.

For example, a former colleague completed that preparation in a concise five months, showcasing an efficient study routine.

On the other hand, my journey spanned a bit more...

Ever heard of Parkinson's Law? It asserts that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. In the context of Symfony Certification preparation, this manifests as the tendency to stretch out the study period. My fourteen-month journey is an explicit example of how the available time can influence the preparation journey.

So, one effective way to counteract the tendency to delay is by taking a proactive step, which is purchasing the certification voucher. This will set the wheels in motion for a structured preparation timeline, focusing on an unavoidable deadline. Indeed, upon acquiring the voucher, a countdown begins. You have precisely at most one year to be ready. And this ticking clock becomes a driving force, preventing the inertia that can sometimes accompany long-term goals.

Plus, be aware that it is common to have a feeling of never being quite ready, and this is normal, given the outstanding volume of information to cover.

Accepting that you may never feel entirely ready is a crucial mindset shift.

Strategies for efficient revision

Define and follow a clear roadmap

Begin your revision journey by crafting a well-defined roadmap. For example, a good roadmap can be the following: consider dedicating one week to each topic. Once you've covered all fifteen topics, ramp up the pace to cover two topics per week. In that way, you can be certified in 6 months!

Revise with teammates

Team up with one or two fellow developers. Together, you can review the Symfony documentation collectively, then engage yourselves in discussions and challenge each other's perspectives.

It can also be a good idea to schedule a weekly meeting for which each person has to prepare some exam-like questions for others. In that way, you'll be able to learn together dynamically and interactively.

Moreover, when somebody begins to lose motivation, others can try to re-motivate him!

💡 If you have trouble finding teammates in your workplace, you can try to find one by asking on the certification channel of the "SymfonyDevs" slack.

Dive into the source code

As you can guess, memorizing every line is hopefully not necessary. And it'll of course be impossible.

But, exploring the source code provides invaluable insights, particularly in clarifying complex concepts. So use Symfony's source code as a tool to illuminate intricate points and improve your understanding.

Put what you learned into practice

A good way to understand things is through practical application.

So, you can create a Symfony scratch project and actively experiment with features that remain unclear. This hands-on approach not only reinforces your knowledge about classic features but also makes you familiar with potential edge cases.

Understand Instead of Memorize

Symfony is more than just a set of rules. Indeed it kind of has a philosophy.

Therefore, rather than attempting to memorize the entire documentation, you better have to focus on becoming familiar with the framework's philosophy. In that way, you'll even be able to guess some exam answers!

Use the Proper Tools

Take advantage of dedicated tools to help learn efficiently.

You can for example take advantage of the wonderful lessons of SymfonyCasts, which will help you, by watching videos, to understand either basics and details about almost every component.

And that's it!

In conclusion, mastering Symfony Certification goes beyond rote memorization. It's a journey of comprehension, collaboration, and hands-on exploration.

By following these strategies, you'll not only navigate the certification process effectively but also emerge with a profound understanding of Symfony.

Happy learning!