Over the years, PHP has evolved greatly and now it’s not just the most popular server-side scripting language but also the language used to build complex websites and web apps. The same could be told about its frameworks. PHP web frameworks have an ecosystem of their own in the world of web development. PHP frameworks are used to build websites and web applications of all sizes and complexity, ranging from small static websites to large scale complex enterprise content management systems.
Still there are different opinions on the question which PHP framework is the best, as some developers prefer performance, some prefer better documentation, some prefer lots of built-in functions, etc. Perhaps we should have a look at the frameworks depending how popular they are.
Different frameworks have been popular in different time. For instance, CodeIgniter framework remained the top choice for PHP developers from 2011 to mid 2014. However, later in 2014 a new PHP framework Laravel has gained its popularity and became the most used framework in 2015. Now in 2016 it is clear that the Laravel framework will remain at the top, due to the huge interest from developers and clients worldwide.
- Laravel
It’s already been said that Laravel is most famous PHP frameworks nowadays. It is very secure and have a lot of useful libraries like session, authentication, middleware, RESTapi and others are included in it. PHP developers choose to work on the Laravel framework because its large and gradually growing community and very good functionality. You don’t need to write more code because every basic and required code-blocks are pre-build on it. At the same time it’s mostly used by experts.
Features:
- Routing and middleware are the best feature of Laravel
- Laravel uses the blade template engine for generating various views
- Inherent Database Version control
- Built-in unit testing and simply readable impressive syntax
- Larger Community catering to thousands of progarmmers
- CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is the second most popular web framework among PHP developers. It is a lightweight powerful PHP framework that provides simple and elegant platform to create full-featured web applications. Choosing CodeIgniter you get all the tools you need in one little package. It’s easy to understand and to extend.
Features:
- Develop using MVC pattern
- No PHP Version Conflicts
- Less Duplication of Code
- Most Active Online Community
- Cache Class
- Security and Encryption
- Little to no server requirements
- Yii
YiiFramework is the high-performance modern PHP framework. It attracts most of PHP developers due to its features like fast development, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, etc.
Features:
- Yii adopts the proven MVC architecture
- Yii allows developers to model database data in terms of objects and avoid the tedium and complexity of writing repetitive SQL statements
- With the help of Yii, collecting input extremely easy and safe
- Zero configuration required to let the task easier for you
- Thorough maintenance
- Cakephp
CakePHP is also popular among PHP developers due to its lightweight, simplicity, faster and require less code. It is easy to learn with fast and flexible templating. The built-in CRUD feature is very handy for database interaction. The framework also has various built-in features for security, email, session, cookie and request handling. It’s perfectly suited for commercial applications.
Features:
- MVC Pattern – Model support data handling, with the model class you can insert, update, delete or read the data from the database.
- ORM features, converting data between incompatible type systems in databases and object-oriented programming languages
- Proper class inheritance
- Easily extend with Components, Helpers, Behaviours, and Plug-ins
- Symfony
No doubt, Symfony is a stable and sustainable PHP framework. It is a flexible, scalable yet powerful. It has a huge community of Symfony fans committed to take PHP to the next level. Symfony has plenty of reusable PHP components that can be used like security, templating, translation, validator, form config and more. It’s easy to install and configure on most platforms and it’s database engine-independent.
Features:
- Based on the premise of convention over configuration–the developer needs to configure -only the unconventional
- Compliant with most web best practices and design patterns
- Enterprise-ready–adaptable to existing information technology
- Stable enough for long-term projects
No doubt, some of our readers will either agree, disagree or have other PHP Frameworks, which they consider the best. But that’s already nice that you’ve read this post and perhaps could contribute to it. So please feel free to add a comment or through light why this or that framework is so popular and why it should or shouldn’t be 🙂
Aliona Kavalevich
Business Development Manager
