title: Using Symfony doctrine models in a REST framework
body: <p>I have a web application which has been developed with symfony 1.4. I have a pretty large code base (and growing). Circa 80,000 lines of code (actions, forms, models, templates etc.)</p>
  
  <p>I'm using the default doctrine version which ships with symfony 1.4.</p>
  
  <p>I've just started developing a mobile version using Sencha touch.  I don't wish to use symfony for the REST web services because:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>REST services in Symfony 1.4 is not great. For example, If i want a PUT request I have to pass a 'sf_method' parameter specifiying that the request method is PUT. This isn't true REST and it's not ideal for Sencha touch.</li>
  <li>I don't need all of the unnecessary symfony functionality(for example the plugins that are autoloaded in the ProjectConfiguration file, the form framework etc.) that you'd use to develop a standard web app. All I need is to define my REST routes and return the specified JSON (as everything that needs to be returned for Sencha touch will be JSON)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I want to keep my mobile app as bloated-free, efficient and quick as possible. And unfortunately for this task, Symfony 1.4 would not be the best choice for using as the backend architecture for my mobile app. If I had chosen symfony2 (it was in it's beta phase, alas) it would be a different story as symfony2 supports true REST functionality. What I do need, however, is the ability to use my current doctrine models (I have circa 90 models) in a chosen REST framework.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, in a nutshell what I need is as simple as this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Call a rest route-&gt;Query my doctrine models-&gt;return the JSON without using symfony.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my question, what would be your advice? I don't want this to be a question of which is the best PHP rest framework, however, what I would like to know is what would be a good REST framework which i can develop efficiently and quickly REST service, make use of my doctrine models and is easily extendable.</p>