A server side language like PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) grown much in demand among web developers and designers in these days. PHP is utilized to develop dynamic websites and real-time web applications, There are numerous frameworks for PHP, which help the developers in many ways. Read on further to know why frameworks are used and which framework is best!
There are the three main Open source MVC PHP Platforms use worldwide for the developers.
- CakePHP
- CodeIgniter
- Laravel
these are the most used platforms in their own rights. They follow the MVC pattern, ensuring a clear separation of logic and presentation. But there are different opinions on which PHP framework is the best, because some developers prefer performance, some prefer better documentation, some prefer lots of built-in functions. And they each have their pros and cons. Most frameworks have the same features, just slightly different syntax. It will be wrong to say you can’t do certain things in other frameworks, just that sometimes it’s simpler.
But which framework is the most popular among this three. Here are statistics since last 5 to 6 years of frameworks.
- A CakePHP is fantastic framework at they started from 2011 to mid 2013. Lightweight to use in developing.
- Then the new aura is coming in framework for CodeIgniter and it’s highly useful and has that kind of ready to use tools and understanding better OO concept as well.
- Then the new kid is grown in market right now in 2016 and It is clearly very popular in the world for the developer and top rated choice framework.
As per work and personal favorites in some countries a Laravel is winner from them. And it’s win at large margins. As per the statistics Laravel is the most common favorite in US, UK, India and many other countries as well.
But let we understand actually what functions they framework has and why we choose particular framework from them.
CakePHP
CakePHP is popular among PHP developers due to its lightweight, simplicity, faster and require less code. CakePHP, if I recall correctly, was one of the first PHP frameworks around back when spaghetti code was standard. It is easy to learn with fast and flexible templating. The built-in CRUD feature is very handy for database interaction. The idea behind Cake was to make developing applications fast. The framework also has various built-in features for security, email, session, cookie and request handling. Less time working means more time making money.
Latest version is CakePHP 3.2 (as per this post).
Pros:
- The main pros is CakePHP have Built-in ORM which always really enjoyed. Building queries is really simple and you can fetch a blog post and all of its comments in one or two lines of code.
- Reverse routing. This makes maintaining links in an application so much easier. This means if you change a controller’s name at some point.
- Big community. Because CakePHP had been around so long you can find the answer for pretty much any question you come up with.
- Plug-in Support. This makes re-using code super simple and help keep the app folder clean.
- Large Database support.
Cons:
- Incredibly slow. Recent versions of CakePHP are much faster and more efficient than previous versions, but it is still one of the slowest frameworks.
- TONS of lines of code. Some developers don’t care what’s going on under the hood. The code is well documented but there’s just so much of it can be overwhelming.
- Autoloading can be awkward.
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. It’s certainly popular, and has been around a similar amount of time as CakePHP. It is a lightweight powerful PHP framework that provides simple and elegant platform to create full-featured web applications.
Latest version is CI 3.0 (as per this post).
Pros:
- Super easy to set up and use. This makes the entry level for a newer PHP developer much lower.
- Extremely well-documented, with examples in a lot of places to illustrate usage.
- Extremely fast.
- Huge community. As with Cake, since CI has been around so long you can almost always find your answer via Google, CI forums, or their IRC channel. This also means there’s lots of code contribution to help get things done (like PayPal libraries, etc)
Cons:
- No modular separation by default. We can’t separate our code in different modules.
- We personally have to extend way too many core files to get CI working the way we like it. The more you modify the core, the more you have to maintain later. We’d rather be coding something productive.
Laravel
Laravel is the most popular PHP framework among PHP developers. This is a relatively new, but great web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax that aims to make web development easy and fast, by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, queuing, and caching.
Latest version is Laravel 5.2 (as per this post).
Pros
- Modularity is built in via “bundles???, making it really easy to drop in/reuse code across application.
- Eloquent ORM is a simple, super fast ORM that makes working with database relations easy
- Very configurable and extendable. Set up apps with the folder structure the way developer’s like it and how it works best for.
- Blade template engine. Very fast (compiles to PHP then caches the results) and very extendable. So easy to add new features without hacking the core.
- Artisan (CLI). It’s so easy to create Migration things with Artisan.
- Reverse routing!
- Excellent documentation.
- Fast Application startup time.
Cons
- Laravel’s core files are all within (at least) the Laravel namespace and not all of the files in core use a namespace slash (a) in front of a call to another core file, which makes extending some classes a bit trickier. This is not a huge issue and one not every developer will need to worry about.
- Routing can feel a little odd sometimes.
- Because of its newness the options for finding answers are still limited in comparison to CakePHP and CodeIgniter. However, the forums and IRC seem to be quite active with helpful people, so usually the answer is findable.
Conclusion
The CakePHP framework is also easy and standard code but it’s causing a large speed to run program. The very popular CodeIgniter framework remained the top choice for PHP developers from 2011 to mid 2014 and it’s fantastic framework for getting the hang of PHP and OO coding and for knocking a small site together fairly quickly with low overhead. However, later in 2014 a new PHP framework Laravel arrived to become the most popular and most used framework in 2015. Now in 2016 it is clear that the Laravel framework will remain at the top, due to huge interest from developers and clients worldwide Laravel is currently developer’s framework of choice. Its coding style makes developing much quicker for developers.
So, this is all you about it!
Comparison of these three big players in the world of PHP.
As always, being a developer the best framework for you is the one which you are good in.
Developer’s view
Mehul Maheriya (Team Leader & Sr. Web Developer)
As per my point of view CodeIgniter is very best for me. I have doing speedy code and getting help from online very fast. And it’s very best and suitable for my developing style. No matter what world voted for the CI has high or low ratings.
Yes I know, right now Laravel is most popular framework worldwide for all developers but I suggest using that framework comfortable you writing with. And I am comfortable with CI. So, I’d choose CodeIgniter at the best from these three.
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