PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. But often coding in PHP, or any language for that matter, can get rather monotonous and repetitive. That’s where a PHP framework can help.
The idea behind a framework is to offer a design you can use across multiple applications. All applications have a number of basic things in common. A framework is designed to provide a structure for those common elements (database interaction, presentation layer, application logic) so you spend less time writing up database interface code or presentation-layer interfaces and more time writing the application itself. The architecture represented by breaking an application up in this fashion is referred to as Model-View-Controller (MVC). Model refers to your data, View to your presentation layer, and Controller refers to the application or business logic.
In this article i have compiled a list of 14 best and popular PHP Frameworks which i think is best for developers, so give them a try and let me know if you like them.
Adroit is a lightweight PHP 5 MVC framework that is geared towards helping you develop faster. The main motivation behind Adroit is to keep it simple, but provide useful features that developers want. Whether you’re just beginning web-application development, or a seasoned veteran, Adroit can help make that experience better.
The Akelos PHP Framework is a web application development platform based on the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern. Based on good practices, it allows you to:
- Write views using Ajax easily
- Control requests and responses through a controller
- Manage internationalized applications
- Communicate models and the database using simple conventions.
CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.
CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. If you’re a developer who lives in the real world of shared hosting accounts and clients with deadlines, and if you’re tired of ponderously large and thoroughly undocumented frameworks then this is for you.
LightVC is a lightweight model-view-controller (MVC) framework without the model. This decoupling allows any model or object relation mapping (ORM) tool to be used, including none at all if one is not needed. LightVC is comparable to, although unlike, CakePHP, Code Igniter, symfony, Solar, and Zend Framework to name a few. It’s major difference is that it does not try to be a full “Web framework” and instead tries to solve the need for an MVC that isn’t coupled to other tools.
Opendelight is an Open Source PHP Application Development Framework. It encompasses the multi-tier architecture of web, and enables entreprise-grade web application development really fast and easy.
PRADO is a component-based and event-driven programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP 5. PRADO stands for P HP R apid A pplication D evelopment O bject-oriented. The sole requirement to run PRADO-based applications is a Web server supporting PHP 5.1.0 or higher.PRADO is free. You can use it to develop either open source or commercial applications.
The Simple PHP Framework is a pragmatic approach to building websites with PHP 5. It’s geared towards web design shops and freelance programmers looking for a common foundation to quickly bring web projects to life. Without getting too technical, SPF follows the no-framework Framework method coined by Rasmus Lerdorf – with a little Active Record thrown in for good measure.
Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP. It provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise. Symfony is based on experience. It does not reinvent the wheel: it uses most of the best practices of web development and integrates some great third-party libraries.
Recess is a restful PHP framework that provides a fun and enjoyable development experience for beginner and seasoned developers alike. If you want a full featured restful web application without having to master the command line or learn complicated deployment recipes, Recess is for you. Recess is fast, light-weight, and has a very small footprint—ideal for LAMP development and drag-and-drop deployment to shared hosts. Recess is a modern framework that uses a loosely-coupled Model-View-Controller architecture designed and optimized specifically for PHP 5.
Yii is a free, open-source Web application development framework written in PHP5 that promotes clean, DRY design and encourages rapid development. It works to streamline your application development and helps to ensure an extremely efficient, extensible, and maintainable end product. Being extremely performance optimized, Yii is a perfect choice for any sized project. However, it has been built with sophisticated, enterprise applications in mind. You have full control over the configuration from head-to-toe (presentation-to-persistence) to conform to your enterprise development guidelines. It comes packaged with tools to help test and debug your application, and has clear and comprehensive documentation.
Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google , Amazon , Yahoo! , Flickr , as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb.
zephyr is an ajax based framework for php5 developers. you can easily develop business applications using this robust framework. this is extremely easy to learn and very simple to implement. you can deliver a full fledged ajax application with strong business layer in backend within some minutes. installation and deployment of packages that you develop for zephyr is hassle free. moreover you will get all the features of most popular templating engine “smarty” and powerfull data access layer “adoDB”.
Zoop has been in development since 2001 and in use for the last 6 years in a number of different production environments. While it predates the recent proliferation of PHP frameworks, it’s based on solid MVC principles, including separation of display, logic, and data layers. It’s designed to be efficient, modular, and extensible, striking a balance between lightweight and fully-featured.
