PHP is a most popular server-side scripting language designed primarily for web development. Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. It is reference implementation is now produced by PHP group.
This post is to help you choose the best PHP framework. A framework provides a large library of code for the common application task. Frameworks also force you to write better and cleaner code thus allowing you to make the code more readable, scalable and maintainable.
PHP frameworks speed up your web development workflow. It also helps you to make your code clean and well structured.
In this post, we will find out the Top 10 PHP framework.
1. Laravel:-
Laravel is a php framework for web application with an expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Laravel attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.
Laravel aims to make the development process a pleasing one for the developer without sacrificing application functionality. Happy developers make the best code. To this end, we’ve attempted to combine the very best of what we have seen in other web frameworks, including frameworks implemented in other languages, such as Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET MVC, and Sinatra.
Laravel is accessible, yet powerful, providing powerful tools needed for large, robust applications. A superb inversion of control container, expressive migration system, and tightly integrated unit testing support give you the tools you need to build any application with which you are tasked.
2. Symfony:-
Symfony is an Open Source PHP framework for developing web applications. It was originally conceived by the interactive agency SensioLabs for the development of websites for its own customers. Symfony was published in 2005 under MIT Open Source license and today it is among the leading frameworks available for PHP development.
Supported by SensioLabs – but also by a large community – Symfony provides many resources: plentiful documentation, community support (mailing lists, IRC, etc.), professional support (consulting, training, etc.), and so on.
Thousands of websites and applications rely on the Symfony framework and the Symfony components as the foundation of their web services. And most of the leading PHP projects, such as Drupal, phpBB, Laravel and eZ Publish use Symfony components to build their applications.
3. CodeIgniter:-
CodeIgniter is loosely based on the popular model–view–controller (MVC) development pattern. While controller classes are a necessary part of development under CodeIgniter, models and views are optional.
It can be also modified to use Hierarchical Model View Controller (HMVC). Which allows developers to maintain modular grouping of Controller, Models and View arranged in a sub-directory format.
CodeIgniter is most often noted for its speed when compared to other PHP frameworks. In a critical take on PHP frameworks in general, PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf spoke at frOSCon in August 2008, noting that he liked CodeIgniter “because it is faster, lighter and the least like a framework.”
4. Yii 2:-
Yii is a high performance, a component-based PHP framework for rapidly developing modern Web applications. The name Yii (pronounced Yee or [ji:]) means “simple and evolutionary” in Chinese. It can also be thought of as an acronym for Yes It Is!
Yii is a generic Web programming framework, meaning that it can be used for developing all kinds of Web applications using PHP. Because of its component-based architecture and sophisticated caching support. It is especially suitable for developing large-scale applications such as portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce projects, RESTful Web services, and so on.
5. Phalcon:-
It is a PHP framework based on the model–view–controller (MVC) pattern. Originally released in 2012, it is an open-sourceframework licensed under the terms of the BSD License.
Phalcon is implemented as a web server extension written in Zephir and C, aiming to boost execution speed, reduce resource usage. It also handles more HTTP requests per second than comparable frameworks written primarily in PHP. One drawback of this approach is that root/administrative access is required on the server to install Phalcon by building a custom binary or using a precompiled one.
6. CakePHP:-
CakePHP is an open-source web php framework. This framework is also popular due to it’s MVC approach.
CakePHP uses well-known software engineering concepts and software design patterns, such as convention over configuration, model–view–controller, active record, association data mapping, and front controller.
CakePHP started in April 2005, when a Polish programmer Michal Tatarynowicz wrote a minimal version of rapid application development in PHP, dubbing it Cake. He published the framework under the MIT license and opened it up to the online community of developers. In December 2005, L. Masters and G. J. Woodworth founded the Cake Software Foundation to promote development related to CakePHP. Version 1.0 was released in May 2006.
One of the project’s inspirations was Ruby on Rails, using many of its concepts. The community has since grown and spawned several sub-projects.
In October 2009, project manager Woodworth and developer N. Abele resigned from the project to focus on their own projects, including the Lithium web framework (previously part of the CakePHP project).
7. Zend Framework:-
Zend Framework is a collection of professional PHP packages with more than 314 million installations. This framework also used to develop web applications and services using PHP 5.6 or upper version. It also provides 100% object-oriented code using a broad spectrum of language features.
Zend Framework uses Composer as a package dependency manager. PHP Unit to test all packages and Travis CI as a Continuous Integration service. Zend Framework also follows PHP-FIG standards. It includes an implementation of PSR-7 for HTTP message interfaces (as shepherded by Matthew Weier O’Phinney, Zend Framework project lead).
Zend Framework 3 evolved from both Zend Framework 2 and 1.
8. Slim:-
It is a PHP micro framework that helps you quickly write simple yet powerful web applications and APIs.
Slim provides a fast and powerful router that maps route callbacks to specific HTTP request methods and URIs. It supports parameters and pattern matching.
This php framework supports any PSR-7 HTTP message implementation so you may inspect and manipulate HTTP message method, status, URI, headers, cookies, and body.
Slim supports dependency injection so you have complete control of your external tools. Use any Container-Interop container.
9. FuelPHP:-
FuelPHP takes a different approach to many frameworks. It strives to be community-driven. More than 300 developers commit to the source code or contributed in the form of pull requests, and even more help us with documentation.
In general, we believe that anyone using the framework is in an equal position to spot bugs, fix them and send pull requests for bugs and new features alike. There is no “us vs them” to this community. Just a group of developers sharing a tool and collaboratively improving it as we use it more and more.
Lightweight, load what you need and configuration over convention. No automagic here!
10. PHPixie:-
PHPixie started as a micro-framework and has gradually grown to be one of the most popular full stack PHP frameworks. While retaining its high performance. This is in part because of the strict architecture that avoids common pitfalls. Such as reliance on static methods, global scope, singletons, and other antipatterns, thus also ensuring that the code is easy to read, debug, extend and test.
In fact, all PHPixie components boast full unit test coverage. It is the PHP framework that will never stand in your way. It provides you with full control over execution flow. Easy to learn and straightforward to master.
But it’s not all just about the code. The PHPixie community is very friendly and helpful, you can expect to get an answer to your question within minutes of asking it in the chat.