PHP has emerged to be World’s most popular server side scripting language in developing websites and web applications, ranging from simple to complex types. According to reports, it is estimated that up to 80% of web developers make use of the PHP frameworks. Using frameworks benefit in many ways like enhancing scalability, long-term maintenance, and allowing your application to evolve over time.
The frameworks offer more productivity wherein it utilizes its ready to use components, libraries, best architecture and implements the separation of model, view, and controller logic. The PHP frameworks are more handy and reliable when it comes to speedy and well-organized web developments.
Points to Ponder On:
However, opting for the right framework can be tricky at times. In this situation keep these few things in mind:
- Functionalities of the framework
- Strong community support
- Learning curves needed
- Scalability
- Active maintenance of the framework
- LTS Support
Now that we have gone through a few points that are needed while choosing a framework, let’s examine some of the best and popular PHP frameworks that provides an excellent enterprise-level stability:
Laravel
Laravel outshines from the other frameworks with its tooling and ecosystem helping the developers in getting the things done easily. Laravel is considered to be the king of the PHP frameworks. It is crafted to be simple, easy to learn and sustains rapid software development. Laravel is built on several Symfony components that make it be a solid framework ensuring to give well-tested and reliable codes. In short, it is well suited for projects of all types and sizes.
CakePHP
This framework is again back in demand with its latest version CakePHP 3.0. Since a long time back it was one of the best and attracted corporates like BMW, Hyundai, and Zumba. Now it has much more advanced features like flexible architecture, improved session management, standalone libraries, improved ORM and much more. With the code generation features, this CakePHP framework enables you in building the web application at a faster pace.
Yii
Yii framework is known to be one among the oldest PHP frameworks. It was lagging behind Laravel and Symfony, but soon after its latest Yii version 2.0, it is increasingly preferred by a majority of the enterprise grade web app developments. Yii is a high-performance framework which is best suited for developing web 2.0 applications. It is sufficient with features like scaffolding, MVC, caching, role-based access control, etc. Since Yii works well with third-party codes, it allows you to integrate other frameworks data into it.
Slim
The best part of this framework is that you don’t have to spend your time by learning it! Slim frameworks code base is so small that you will finish the entire code in just a few time span. Slim is an open source, sophisticated micro framework supporting encrypted cookies, flash messages, URL routing, best-in-class middleware architectures and much more. It is also known to be the fastest RESTful framework perfect for small rest APIs.
CodeIgniter
This is a powerful PHP framework, very developer friendly offering simple and easy to use simple solutions for developing complex applications. It requires nearly zero configuration along with no supports. It’s exceptionally fast and features rich set of libraries, simple interface, and logical structures. It supports a base system that is both lean and agile.
Concluding
Expressive, Zend, Silex, FuelPHP, Aura, Phalcon, the list of frameworks is just endless. And each of those frameworks has their own qualities in place. Which framework best fits your business completely depends on the requirements of the application you intend to develop, infrastructure, the developers in your team and a lot of other factors.