PHP Frameworks

How many of you use a PHP framework? If you do use a PHP framework, which one do you use, and why?

If not, why not?

 

Yes.

I use symfony, and have used Symfony, Zend, Cake, and Codeignitor.

What are you looking to use a framework for, or are you just looking to learn? If I was going to recommend one to learn from a job, or business perspective, I would recommend Zend. I personally don't like it, and don't develop using it for my own projects, but it's the most popular in the business world. Magento is based on it which is also huge. It's also supported by the company that maintains PHP. With that being said, it is excessively complicated. It's arguably not a framework (At least the earlier versions) and is more of a library us reusable code. It's more modular than any other framework. It has poor, or very poor documentation.

For just wanting to start using a framework, I recommend Symfony or Codeignitor. Codeignitor is a great, simple, and lighter-weight framework. Good community, well made framework. Symfony has excellent documentation, a huge user base. It's a little clunky, but scales well, can be optimized. Has built-in Ajax support, and support for Propel and/or Doctrine ORM's. It has some amazing generating abilities. Entire sites can be virtually built using config files. But, you don't need to use more than a few config files to get a site/application to work. Symfony is probably the closest to ROR in design and functionality.

Cake isn't bad, but I have never cared for the documentation, or it's functionality. Cake got popular off of a lot of hype, but offers nothing over Codeignitor or Symfony that I have seen.

Keep in mind with any framework, is that there is often a steep learning curve, especially if you haven't used the MVC design pattern, or used an ORM for database interactions. Having no experience with these, I would estimate a good PHP programmer would need several intensive months to become proficient, and a year or more to become an expert.

 

I use frameworks depending on the project and the size and time frame of application. Its not necessary to use a frame work for a simple application.

But for big application it will help us a lot as they will be having great structure and mainly MVC architecture.

Zend is one of the best framework I have worked with. They even have the AMF module which you can use of Adobe Flex and to my knowledge only zend have it.

Codeignitor is easy to learn and to start with.

 

hi,
i am looking for a mvc framework or cms to be easily customizable. Generally I am creating bespoke solutions using existing code i wrote before, but it always takes time to develop new website. Can you recommend any framework or cms with simple admin/news/blog/gallery/SEO friendly links where I can easily add my own stuff if I want? Let's say very light wordpress/joompla without any additional stuff. I just want to have a good engine where i can transfer to every new website, copy module like blog etc and create bespoke stuff if needed. Where should i look for or what should i learn? got experience in c,c++, php 4 years.
Thanks

 

i too have to start learning frameworks which one do you guys recomend to start with ? Zend ?

 

For me zend was kinda hard to start with .
I've also tried cakephp and simphony but i've stopped at codeigniter.
It's really easy to start with, has a very good documentation and an active forum.
The only thing it doesn't have it's a proper auth, but there are user created libraries for that.
Codebreaker.

 

what do you mean by zend is hard? is codeigniter better - easier to use for new projects (as a engine) than zend? (once u know how to use both)

 

Thanks for the informative reply. I have recently began using CodeIgniter. Happy to see I am on the right track.

 

You are, Codeigniter is really great .. it's lightweight, but powerful, very easy to learn, and easy to install. It has great wiki and forum. You may also google for codeigniter tech data figures you will find that it's quite fast, and that it's faster than many other frameworks

 

I use my custom built framework but if i would have to go for a commercial one it would be zend framework.