🧩 Meetup AFUP Paris – Novembre 2025
on November 28, 2025
Document validation with Symfony + AI & technical test decryption
On November 27, 2025, the AFUP Paris branch: PHP met at Eleven Labs, at 102 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, for another meetup of the 2025-2026 season. A friendly, technical evening resolutely focused on the current challenges of PHP development: AI applied to Symfony, quality, recruitment… and a good time for networking.
🏢 A welcome at Eleven Labs
For this edition, Eleven Labs – an IT services company specializing in custom web and mobile projects, with offices in Paris, Nantes, and Montreal – hosted the community on the 5th floor of its premises. An ideal atmosphere for exchanging ideas, learning, and meeting other web enthusiasts.
🎤 AFUP Introduction & News – Opening presentation of the meetup
As with every edition, the AFUP Paris team opened the evening with a welcome address, important announcements, and an overview of PHP and community news. Here is a complete summary of the points presented.
🙋♀️ 🎙️ Call for Speakers, Sponsors & Venues
AFUP Paris regularly changes speakers, venues and even sometimes partners for food and drinks after the talks.
👉 If you wish:
suggest a topic,
to host a meetup at your premises
or sponsor the aperitif,
You are welcome! Just contact us — we plan meetups several months in advance.
🎓 AFUP Mentoring Program: two components
AFUP has two mentoring programs, both voluntary and free:
- Mentoring for speakers
For those who want to:
learn how to prepare a talk,
structuring a presentation,
or to gain confidence in speaking in public.
This program is still relatively unknown, but open to all levels. Don't hesitate to register!
- PHP Mentoring
For :
mentees wishing to progress in PHP,
Mentors who want to pass on their knowledge.
👉 The registration link is available during meetups and on our social media.
🗓️ Upcoming AFUP Paris meetups
The next two dates have already been set:
Tuesday, December 17 – at Acolia
Thursday, January 8 – at Libid
As always, these evenings are free and open to everyone, subject to availability.
🔄 Overview of Parisian tech meetups
AFUP takes advantage of each edition to promote related tech events. In early December, several meetups will take place in Paris focusing on:
Ruby
Security / AppSec
Angular
And other local communities
A great opportunity to explore other ecosystems and expand your network!
🗞️ AFUP National News 🔹 AFUP Day 2025 – May 22
The event was announced last month. It will take place in 24 cities including: Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon… and, for the first time, Paris!
👉 Registration is open. A QR code was displayed: there are still a few places available at the "blind spot" price.
🐘 PHP News PHP 8.5 is released!
The new version has been available for a few days:
new official website
performance improvements,
Welcome new features for developers.
Results of the AFUP Salary Barometer
The annual barometer has been published:
market trends,
role-based forks
Evolution of PHP salaries in France.
Very useful for tracking your progress or negotiations.
PHPStan massively improves its support
Specifically for:
data providers,
other PHP constructs that have historically been poorly supported.
Good news for projects with high quality and static requirements.
📱 LinkTree AFUP Networks & Community
All useful links are grouped here: LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Discord, Slack, Meetup…
Feedback questionnaire
A QR code was provided to collect your feedback on the evening. This feedback helps us improve future meetups.
🎙️ 1. Symfony + AI: validate your documents before even opening them!
Speaker: Marianne Joseph-Géhannin
The evening got off to a great start with a presentation focused on the automated pre-validation of documents using the Symfony + OCR + LLM combination. A very current use case for product teams and platforms that handle heterogeneous files on a daily basis.
For this first presentation of the evening, Marianne shared a concrete feedback: how to combine Symfony, OCR and language models (LLM) to automate the pre-validation of administrative documents — before a human even consults them.
A practical topic, stemming from a real customer need, combining AI, quality and architecture.
👤 Who is Marianne?
Marianne has been developing in PHP since 2011, with a background that has included Symfony since version 1.4. She has been working at Eleven Labs since 2020 and is currently on assignment at Le Monde, notably on the Falcon framework.
🧩 The problem: documents to process… in bulk
The use case presented comes from a call for tenders for a company managing school trips and holiday stays.
Each case requires numerous documents:
identity card,
passport,
certificate,
various supporting documents…
For operational teams, manual verification represents:
a time-consuming task,
a risk of error,
a low-value treatment
and a large variability in the quality of the documents provided.
🎯 Project objective: to automatically eliminate incorrect documents so that operators only process truly valid files.
🧰 The three technical pillars of the project
Marianne built her solution using three main building blocks:
- Symfony + Symfony-AI
The new Symfony AI initiative offers:
native integration of LLM into the Symfony ecosystem,
clients for language models,
integrated vectorization,
an “AI Platform” to simplify the use of providers.
In this project, Marianne mainly used:
ChatGPT integration via Symfony-AI Platform,
a first approach to vectorization for structuring rules.
- OCR with Tesseract
The documents provided are often images (scans, photos, unstructured PDFs). OCR is therefore essential to extract usable text.
Functioning :
cleaning (contrast, noise reduction…),
detection of text areas,
character recognition,
production of a raw text.
Marianne uses Tesseract via:
an HTTP client,
a local Docker container
an abstract interface to change OCR if needed.
- An LLM to interpret and classify documents
Once the text is extracted, an LLM analyzes:
What type of document is it?
if the expected information is present,
if the document is consistent.
Marianne tested several models:
ChatGPT → works perfectly
LLama, Qwen… via Ollama locally → limitations (response time, quality, hardware constraints)
She observed: ➡️ unpredictable or unusable local responses ➡️ insufficient hardware power ➡️ timeout issues
Result: for this POC, ChatGPT was the most reliable model.
📝 The prompt used
The prompt is intentionally simple:
provide a list of possible document types (ID card, passport, residence permit…)
provide the text extracted by OCR
request a response strictly in JSON format
This JSON format guarantees the possibility of:
validate the structure,
categorize the results,
save to database.
ChatGPT consistently adhered to the format — which was not the case with local models.
🔄 Processing architecture (pipeline)
Here is the complete pipeline:
📤 Sending the file via a Symfony command (no form for the POC).
🧠 Tesseract OCR → text extraction.
💬 LLM → analysis, classification, validation.
🗃️ Recording of the result in the database, for use by the operators.
❌ If a document does not match its expected type → rejection + explanatory message.
The MVC approach is based on:
a DTO for data,
a handler,
specific services (OCR, AI, storage),
a modular design to replace components as needed.
🎥 Demonstration
Marianne showed several documents that were used:
an identity card,
a passport,
a poster reading “French Republic” (to test its robustness),
And the tool knew:
recognizing the correct document in simple cases,
reject false positives in ambiguous cases.
🧪 Limitations & Lessons Learned ❗ Finding the Right AI Model
Local models (via Ollama) have shown their limitations: performance, inconsistencies, difficulty in respecting the JSON format.
ChatGPT has proven to be much more reliable.
❗ Manage the timeout
Several attempts were made to stabilize the response time.
Temperature settings, output constraints…
Sometimes it is necessary to patch directly into the local engine code.
❗ The documentation
Symfony-AI → very good documentation
OCR / Tesseract → more spartan
AI doesn't always help us understand what we don't yet understand!
❗ GDPR and security
It's impossible to send sensitive documents to an external provider in a real-world context. Hence the advantage of local processing — but this requires suitable hardware.
🔎 What this POC demonstrates
✔️ AI can bring real business value to document validation ✔️ The Symfony → OCR → LLM pipeline is perfectly feasible ✔️ Operators save time by focusing on real-world cases ✔️ Symfony-AI integration greatly simplifies these processes
But also :
⚠️ AI isn't magic: you need to assess its relevance, workload, and costs. ⚠️ Don't underestimate the effort required to make an AI pipeline reliable and usable.
🎉 Conclusion
This project perfectly illustrates how Symfony + AI can solve very concrete problems by automating tasks that were previously done manually. It's a pragmatic, measured, and intelligent use of AI—far from being just a buzzword—and perfectly applicable to other sectors.
Thank you to Marianne for this rich and clear sharing!
🎙️ 2. The technical test: useful, useless or counterproductive?
Speaker: Jeanne Londiche
The second talk delved into a sometimes sensitive but crucial topic: technical testing in recruitment. Useful? Not always. Poorly calibrated? Often. Counterproductive? Sometimes.
💡 What has been explored:
What the technical test measures… and what it doesn't measure
The most common biases
The impact on stress, communication, and trust
How a test reveals logic and curiosity, not just code
What alternatives can be considered for fairer and more effective recruitment?
Interactive exchanges with the audience: feedback, anecdotes, best practices
An intervention that asks the right questions and helps both candidates and recruiters to better use (or rethink) this tool.
Perfect, we're continuing in the same vein as for Symfony+IA 👍 Here's a clean, structured and usable rewrite for a blog post for Jeanne's presentation on technical tests.
🎙️ Talk: Technical testing – useful, useless, or downright counterproductive?
By Jeanne Londiche
For the second talk of the evening, Jeanne offered an interactive conference on a topic that many developers know well (and sometimes dread): 👉 technical testing in recruitment processes.
Objective :
- Review the different types of tests, * share concrete feedback, * question what is actually being evaluated, * and ask: “Does it really help with better recruitment… or not?”
👤 Who is Jeanne?
Jeanne introduces herself:
- She runs an open-source job board focused on recruitment (hosted on GitHub). * She grew up in England and has lived there since 2013. * She has specialized in PHP recruitment since 2011.
With over a decade of experience, she has seen all kinds of technical tests, from both the candidate and company sides.
🧪 The main categories of tests covered
Jeanne structures her presentation around several approaches:
- Multiple-choice questions / online questionnaires * In-house / application-based test (develop a small application) * Algorithm test * Refactoring test * Pair programming * Conversational technical interview
The conference focuses mainly on three very common formats: 👉 multiple-choice questions, in-house tests, and refactoring, with many concrete examples.
#1️⃣ Technical MCQs: quick but very theoretical
Multiple-choice quizzes are often offered via specialized platforms. Jeanne asks the room: “Who has already taken a technical multiple-choice quiz? Do you like them?” Almost unanimous answer: no.
✅ The positive points:
- Quick to correct. * Useful for an initial screening of a large number of candidates. * Gives an "objective" aspect to the process (scores, thresholds, etc.).
❌ Major limitations:
- Highly theoretical, often disconnected from the real-world experience of a developer. * Heavily dependent on how the questions are worded. * Can exclude talented candidates who may not have the "correct" definition in mind, but who would be perfectly capable of solving the problem in a real-world context. * Favor those who simply recite the "recipe book" rather than those with curiosity, practical experience, and common sense.
In summary: ➡️ useful for rough filtering ➡️ very insufficient for judging the true value of a developer.
#2️⃣ In-house/application testing: practical, but often time-consuming
In-house (or application) testing involves developing a small application or feature "as if it were in real life":
- to be done at home, * sometimes with a time limit, * sometimes “to be handed in when it’s ready”.
In the room, several people testify: some spent 12 to 15 hours there for a single test.
✅ The positive points:
-
Closer to the reality of work. * Allows you to see:
- Code structuring, * architectural choices, * test management, * documentation, * even a short summary email (“with more time, I would have done…”), which is often as important as the submitted code. * Leaves room for personal expression (technical choices, project organization, etc.).
❌ Major drawbacks:
-
Can be very long: several evenings or an entire weekend. * Very often unpaid, especially for senior positions. * Risk of exploitation:
Companies sometimes use these tests to advance their own product without ever hiring. Many experienced developers now refuse these tests.
“It’s my job, I get paid to produce code; my experience and my CV speak for themselves.”
And most importantly: 🟥 The lack of feedback is consistently cited as a major problem. Candidates spend hours on it, and at best receive:
“Sorry, we are not continuing the process.” > without understanding what went wrong.
💬 Feedback: essential… and all too often absent
Jeanne insists on one point: 👉 a technical test without feedback is a missed opportunity for both sides.
-
For the candidate:
- It's frustrating, * impossible to know what was expected, * impossible to make progress.
-
For the company:
-
This gives a bad image of the process, * Candidates often draw the following conclusion:
“If even the test is poorly managed, do I really want to work with them?”
-
The room confirms: several people report having had:
- vague remarks such as “not thorough enough” without explanation, * or no feedback at all.
Jeanne also points out that the technical test assesses the company as much as the candidate. A messy, opaque, or disrespectful process is a sign of a poor fit.
#3️⃣ Refactoring test: a format often more revealing
Jeanne then mentions a test format that she particularly likes: 👉 refactoring testing, sometimes presented as a kata.
Principle:
-
Existing code is provided, sometimes very "legacy" or intentionally flawed. * The candidate is asked to explain:
- what he would do, * where he would start, * which parts he would refactor and why, * how he would improve readability, architecture, testing.
Sometimes this test is done:
- in pair programming, * or in an interview, based on a projected code excerpt.
✅ Why this format can be very interesting:
-
It closely resembles the reality of many missions (we rarely work from scratch). * It allows us to see:
- Analytical skills, * understanding of business challenges, * legacy system management, * technical communication. * It facilitates genuine exchange: choices can be explored in depth, discussions held, and challenges made.
But here again, the quality of the exercise depends on:
- clarity of instructions, * presence or absence of a structured debrief afterwards, * and how time is managed (explicit or implicit timer).
🤖 And what about AI in all of this?
The question is posed: “Will AI change everything for technical testing?”
Jeanne replies:
-
Not really yet: the processes haven't been widely adapted. * But since AI is already changing our daily lives as developers, it would make sense for it to also change:
- test formats, * what is being assessed (ability to use tools, not just to do everything “by hand”).
We are probably heading towards tests where we appreciate the following equally:
- the ability to model a problem, * and to know how to intelligently rely on tools (including AI).
🧭 What Jeanne suggests remembering
There is no perfect technical test. But we can ask the right questions:
For businesses:
- What do we really want to measure? * Does this test reflect the reality of the job? * Are we respecting the candidates' time? * Are we providing meaningful feedback?
For developers:
- What does this test tell me about the company culture? * Do I really want to work in an environment that recruits this way? * Does the process make me want to join… or raise red flags?
Ultimately, the technical test should be:
a tool for meeting, not a torture test.
🤝 A meetup open to everyone
As always with AFUP, the evening was open to everyone: beginners, juniors, seniors, tech leads, freelancers, or simply curious individuals. The goal was simple: to share knowledge, demystify concepts, and build connections.
Participation was free but places were limited, so the event showed great momentum and an engaged audience.
🎯 Why do these topics matter?
AI continues to have a significant impact on our PHP and Symfony applications.
Document quality and validation are real issues in production
Tech recruitment and its methods are evolving, sometimes too slowly.
Meetups play a vital role: breaking down silos, sharing experience, and staying up-to-date.
📅 See you at the next meetup
The AFUP Paris branch continues its 2025-2026 program with new topics, new speakers and always the same spirit: to share, learn, and advance the PHP community.