7 Best PHP Frameworks
Development of software applications is always a complex and a time consuming process. But thanks to those high-end PHP frameworks, that developing an agile application has now become easier and faster. That much needed app maintenance and scalability is now possible with the set of these highly functional frameworks, which compiles well with all the development standards and keeps your code organized, in a way, helping your application to evolve and grow over the time.
Thus, when time constraints are a big issue and you also want a high quality app in this limited time, then it is the best to use the frameworks. These let you dedicate more of your time towards specific tasks and functionality and will result in sustainable and high quality code. So, without much ado, take a look at the list of some popular PHP frameworks. Check them out and use them to build interoperable and agile applications.
Number 1 – Laravel
Laravel is yet another brilliant PHP Framework that’s equipped with tons of interesting features including RESTful routing, native PHP or light weight tempting engine and many more. Built using several Symfony components, Laravel offers you web application an amazing foundation of reliable and well-tested code. Some other interesting features of Laravel include a powerful queue library, an amazing ORM, painless routing and a simple authentication.
- Restful routing that manages all the client/server routes easily and connects resources smoothly.
- Inherent Database Version control
- A lightweight Blade Templating Engine that is powerfully driven by template inheritance of files having .blade.php extension. This comes under the View part of the robust MVC architecture of Laravel.
- Composer – An amazing tool that lets you manage your application’s third party packages easily.
- Comes bundled with Eloquent – An ORM that offers a beautifully simple Active Record implementation to work with your databases and is relatively faster than all other PHP frameworks
- Built-in unit testing and simply readable impressive syntax
- Larger Community catering to thousands of programming geeks and application developers
- Intelligently designed to offer incredible flexibility to developers that help them create each and everything from small sites to giant enterprise applications.
- Required skills – PHP and OOP knowledge Latest Stable Version – 4.1 Most Suited for – Experts Release Date – June 11, 2011 Licensed Under- MIT
Considered as one of the fastest PHP Frameworks, Phalcon has been implemented as a C extension coupled with lower resource consumption. Some of the excellent features included within this PHP Framework are translations, security, assets management, universal auto-loader and many more. You can use Phalcon for developing full MVC applications viz: single-module, multi-module and micro applications.
Exclusive Features
- Learning curve is pretty easy
- Easy to use ORM
- Little overhead as compared to other frameworks
- Native namespaces so that you can differentiate between similar class names or controllers and create bundles or modules easily.
- Direct Injection that facilitates easy-to-create software which tests end to end applications.
- Loosely coupled to allow developers to use the whole framework or selected objects
- Neat and clean intuitive API with solid code written on powerful design patterns
- Required skills – PHP 5 , OOP Latest Stable Version – 1.2.6 Most Suited for – Intermediates Release Date – 14 Nov, 2012 Licensed Under- BSD
Available in its version 2, Symfony is an excellent PHP Framework for creating websites and web applications. It has been built on top of Symfony components such as Drupal, Ez Publish, and phpBB. With over 300,000 developers on board, Symfony has witnessed over 1,000,000 downloads till date. There have been more than 1000 code contributors for Symfony till date. Backed by a huge community of Symfony fans, it is believed that the framework will go to a whole new level in the forthcoming years..
Exclusive Features
- The most stable, sustainable and flexible 3 in 1 framework that is quickly adaptable to all your needs
- Entirely Configurable with its “Dependency Injector” and “Event Dispatcher”
- Can be used as a standalone micro framework (Symfony 2) without you having to reinvent the wheel and installing the entire framework
- Lets you build and customize everything as per your own needs
- Growing Ecosystem of expert Community, Mailing Lists and IRCs etc. and many other service companies
- Extensible up to the brim and is presented as “Bundles” that are intended to add extra functionalities to the framework.
- Lets you leverage the power and strength of development by allowing to validate roles and improve productivity
- Apparently accessible to satiate professionals and advanced users with its amazing documentation and best practices.
- Required skills – PHP 5, OOP , ORM, Console Latest Stable Version – 2.4.1 Most Suited for – Intermediates / Experts Release Date – 22nd October, 2005 Licensed Under- MIT
Yii is a high performance feature rich framework that mainly lets you focus on the beautifulness of the code while doing the entire grunge work completely behind the scenes. A lot of things in Yii happen automatically but still the learning curve is slightly steeper.
Exclusive Features
- Powerful Caching system that loads your web applications extremely fast.
- Security at its best with Yii. From input validation and output filtering to SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention, it offers everything to ensure your application is safe and secure.
- Provides excellent support for writing and running both unit tests and functionality tests, which are prominently based on PHPUnit and Selenium.
- There is a detailed documentation for everything if you get stuck anywhere. May it be any single method or property, everything is clearly and systematically documented.
- Works fantastically well with 3rd party codes. It is designed in a way that you can even use codes from PEAR or ZEND framework into your Yii Web Application.
- Has a built in authentication support that is facilitated via RBAC (Role Based Access Control).
- Well integrated with JQuery and comes bundled with major Ajax enabled widgets like auto completion input field, Treeview, Data Grid etc that lets you write highly efficient and versatile UI.
- Supports message translation, date and time formatting, number formatting, and interface localization.
- Offers professionally clean and reusable code that follows MVC pattern.
- Integrates best with both the relational and non relational databases.
- Required skills –PHP5 , OOP Latest Stable Version – 1.1.14 Most Suited for – Intermediates Release Date – Dec 1, 2013 Licensed Under- BSD
If you’re a web developer who’s in need of a simple and an elegant toolkit for creating feature-loaded and visually impressive web applications, then Codeigniter is the framework for you. Currently available in its version 2.2.1, Codeigniter comes with clear documentation. Some other interesting features of this PHP framework include nearly zero configuration, no large-scale monolithic libraries, compatibility with standard hosting, no restrictive coding rules, no need for template language and many more..
Exclusive Features
- Offers incredible control in comparison to other frameworks specially Yii.
- Best framework for Beginners as it is simply great and easier to learn
- Exceptionally High performance and broad compatibility delivered with standard hosting
- Zero configuration required to let the task easier for you
- Large scale monolithic libraries that let complexity break into simplicity
- Thorough maintenance
- Required skills – PHP and OOP basics Latest Stable Version- 2.1.4 Most Suited for – Beginners Release Date – Feb 28,2006 Licensed Under- OSL
Considered as a contemporary framework for PHP development, CakePHP 3.0 comes loaded with remarkable features including enhanced components and helpers, improved session management, improved consistency of conventions, ORM improvements and many more. CakePHP 3.0 comes with increased modularity, allowing you to create more standalone libraries in addition to reducing coupling. Plus, there are tools like PSR-0, PSR-1 and composer which have helped in improving the interoperability..
Exclusive Features
- Good code generation and scaffolding features that rapidly build prototypes to suit all your needs
- No complicated XML/YAML file configurations to set up databases
- Perfectly suited for commercial applications
- Immense Built functionalities like Translation access, database access, caching, validation and authentication
- Securing your App from antisocial elements through CSRF protection, form tampering protection, SQL injection prevention, XSS prevention,
- Required skills – PHP, OOP and ability to sort out Frameworks Latest Stable Version – 2.4.5 Most Suited for – Experts Release Date – April 2005 Licensed Under- MIT
Considered as one of the most popular PHP Frameworks for building high performing web applications, Zend comes with cryptographic and secure coding tools which allow you to execute web app development projects in a flawless manner. Some interesting features of Zend framework include modularity, extensibility, enterprise ready and a vibrant community.
Exclusive Features
- Offers the most efficiently designed workflows and API-centric applications that deploy amazingly fast
- Agile Design methodology that focuses on delivering the high quality enterprise apps
- World class Cloud support on servers. No Cloud lock-in, get everything on your choice of clouds.
- Inherently excellent streamlining and automation process that brings software from codes to production
- The most coolest Drag and Drop editor, and unmatched front-end support (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) at your ease
- Instant Online Debugging and PHP Unit testing tools to assist with codes and test case report.
- Intuitively connected Database Wizard and Editable Table Viewer for exclusive database connectivity.
- Required skills – PHP 5 and Expert OOP knowledge Latest Stable Version – 2.2.5 Most Suited for –Experts Release Date –March 3, 2006 Licensed Under- BSD
With these 7 handy PHP frameworks at your disposal, I’m sure it’d become comfortable for you to come up with web applications that are truly amazing and able to impress the targeted audience. So, just try these frameworks and you’ll soon be able to pick your favorite
.jpg){kind=tracking}
