There are over a dozen PHP frameworks that the PHP developers frequently use for developing web applications. Each of the frameworks comes with its pros and cons and works best for a certain kind of purpose. For beginners, PHP frameworks are the best place to start with. In this article, we are discussing some of the most popular PHP Frameworks.
Some PHP geniuses came up with a concept of PHP frameworks and made the world a more comfortable place for many PHP developers. If you are wondering, what is all this noise (mostly good) about PHP frameworks, and how do they help, here is the simple answer to it – PHP Frameworks streamline the development process, making it much faster, much flawless, and more efficient at the performance. Mostly, because the chances of bad coding, even for a beginner, is practically meager to nil when using a framework.
Here come another questions – Why are there so many PHP Frameworks? Simple, Each of the frameworks is suitable for a specific type of website and a certain kind of audience. For example, a particular framework may work fantastic for an e-commerce portal, but not much if developing a social media platform using it. Similarly, a framework that is best for a news website may not perform equally well for a catalog/portfolio website.
If you are confused about which framework would be best for your website application, instead of doing trial and errors with the frameworks and wasting your time there, hire PHP developer, and they will guide you through it.
In this article, we will discuss some of the most popular PHP frameworks of 2020:
1) Laravel
Since its inception in 2011, this framework has risen in popularity with every passing day. It is based on MVC architecture. Hence it leads to faster and seamless website development. The fantastic features of this framework, like lightweight Blade templating engine, RESTful controllers, unit testing, ORM, a packaging system, etc., make this framework super attractive. Ask a PHP web development company, and they will tell you how hassle-free coding becomes with Laravel. The ease with which this framework allows integration of third-party applications earns it bonus points.
2) CodeIgnitor
This one does not require much introduction. It is one of the most comprehensive frameworks of PHP that can practically achieve almost anything. It is lightweight and rather hassle-free due to its low footprint. To install it, you just need to upload it in the hosting service – And you are ready to roll! Being old and famous, the documentation of CodeIgniter is very extensive and powerful. Additionally, the CodeIgniter community is a very supportive one and contributes lavishly. Developing full-fledged web applications is a cake-walk with this PHP-based framework.
3) Phalcon
The framework was introduced in 2012. It does include ORM, MVC, caching, and auto-loading components. With that, because this framework requires much fewer resources than other frameworks, and is built explicitly as C-extension, developing a website using it happens at ultra-fast speed. Template engines, ease of building applications that require international language support, form builders are some of the crucial features of this framework. Of course, the framework comes with amazing developers’ data storage tools like its own SQL dialect: PHQL, along with it comes Object Document Mapping for MongoDB.
4) Symphony
This open-source framework is developed by French SensioLabs and is highly supported by its community. With very extensive documentation, which provides a great deal of aid during the development process, this framework is used by none other than BBC, Drupal, and eZpublish. This feature-rich framework is but a set of decoupled and reusable components (libraries) that makes it a very lightweight framework, which is very professional and stable too, at the same time. The flexibility of Symphony, also, is praiseworthy. The bundles and libraries of this framework eliminate any such strict dependency on the architecture.
5) Zend Framework
This framework is built by Zend Technologies and was first launched in the year 2006. Zend is a fantastic collection of PHP-based packages. It is most popular for building high-performance enterprise-level applications. Along with a long list of components and tools, this framework comes with Zend’s proprietary IDE: Zend Studio, which helps in doing the integration without any hassles. Of course, the framework does support rapid application development. The key focus is on the object, and the most potent benefit remains in the reuse of code.
In Sum:
PHP Frameworks are tools for doing Rapid Application Development (RAD). It does so by providing a basis on which PHP developers can build an application with much less effort. There are many high-performing websites with heavy traffic that are built on PHP frameworks. In the future, we can expect even more innovating and cutting edge applications to tackle and effectively integrate with emerging technologies.
