What are the Best PHP Frameworks Available?

Within the past few years as PHP has evolved as the scripting language of choice by most developers, there have been an explosion of PHP frameworks to hit the scene. There is a great debate about what the best PHP frameworks are, because the simple fact is that not every framework is built for everyone. Here’s a quick rundown of five of the best and most popular choices right now:

The Zend Framework

The Zend Framework has a massive following amongst the development community and is focused on web 2.0 style applications. Because of their massive following, extensive support and active user base, Zend is referred to as “The PHP Company”. Zend is one of, if not, the most popular PHP frameworks available today. It has robust features that are built for corporate-level development, and it requires an extensive knowledge of PHP.

CakePHP

CakePHP is a great choice for beginners to advanced PHP developers. It’s based on the same principles that Ruby on Rails is designed around, and it’s heavily focused on rapid development – making it a great framework to be used for rapid application development. Its rapidly growing support system, simplicity, and scalability make CakePHP one of the most popular PHP frameworks available today.

Symfony

Symfony is aimed more at advanced developers who’s main objective is to create enterprise-level applications – most notably Askeet and Yahoo! Bookmarks. This open source PHP framework is full of features and can do it all, but it’s main downfall is that it is a bit slower than other frameworks.

Codelgniter

Codelgniter is well-known for its ease-of-use, performance and speed. Unlike Symfony, this PHP framework is ideal for shared hosting accounts or for when you want a framework with a small footprint. It offers simple solutions, and has an extensive library of video tutorials, forums, a user guide and wiki available for support. Beginners should consider using Codelgniter.

Seagull

Seagull is a well-established PHP framework used for building web, command line and GUI apps. It is an extremely easy to use framework that is ideal for beginners to advanced coders. For beginners, Seagull features a library of sample applications that can be customized to fit your needs, and for experts, Seagull offers a host of options – including best practices, standards, and modular codebase – for building web applications quickly and easily. Seagull has an active developer community and plenty of support documentation in place as well.

Summary

PHP frameworks are a great way for developers of all skill levels to reduce the need for repetitive coding, speed up the development process, and to ensure proper coding when creating web applications. This not only speeds up the development of rich applications, but it also tightens up PHP security by reducing the risk of security holes in your coding.

While some expert PHP coders do not feel the need to use frameworks to develop web apps, they can still be an advantage in situations where rapid development is necessary, such as under tight deadlines. And for beginner to intermediate developers, frameworks can enhance the PHP learning process while promoting good coding practices and reducing bad coding, which is common in PHP due to its “forgiving” nature.

There are many PHP frameworks available today, and thus developers are sure to find a framework that fits there needs in terms of features, support, speed, scalability and more. Some of the top PHP frameworks used by developers today include: The Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symfony, Codelgniter, and Seagull.