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Modern PHP Enums with Symfony: Patterns, pitfalls & production-ready examples
A practical, battle-tested roadmap for harnessing PHP 8.3 enums in real-world Symfony projects — covering forms, routing, Doctrine persistence, and the hidden gotchas to dodge.
When PHP 8.1 finally introduced first-class enumerations, it closed one of the last gaps between PHP and languages such as Java or C#. Two releases later (PHP 8.3), the feature is stable, battle-tested and tightly integrated into the Symfony ecosystem. This article walks you through the core syntax, best-practice patterns, common pitfalls, and a complete end-to-end Symfony example that stores, validates, routes and serialises an enum safely.
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1. Why bother?
Before enums, most PHP code relied on const blocks, magic strings, or doctrine ENUM columns. All three approaches have drawbacks: you cannot type-hint them, IDE autocompletion is brittle, and invalid values sneak in at runtime. Real enums give you:
- Strict typing at compile-time and during static analysis.
- Expressive domain code (methods live directly on the enum).
