Symfony is a PHP web application framework and a set of reusable PHP components/libraries. It provides a structured, scalable, and maintainable framework for developing web applications, adhering to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. Symfony is known for its flexibility, extensive use of dependency injection, and as a foundation for many other frameworks and projects, including Laravel and Drupal.
Symfony comes with Doctrine ORM integrated as one of its primary features for database interaction. Doctrine is the default ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) tool used in Symfony, providing a powerful layer for managing database operations in an object-oriented way. While Symfony and Doctrine are separate projects, they are often used together, and Symfony’s standard edition includes Doctrine ORM out-of-the-box, making it easy to start working with databases in a Symfony project.