Over the past few years, PHP has turned out like a boon for each web development or a PHP development company that prefers creating robust solutions in a cost-effective manner. A recent study reveals that PHP is currently being used on aprox. 20 million websites and one million web servers. In addition to this, some of the leading blog providers WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Concrete5, Mybb, and Mediawiki even make use of the framework in order to come up with customizable web applications like never before.
Before we look into the quest of PHP frameworks, let’s understand the technique of choosing one. What factors are required to analyze before choosing the right framework for developing your web application?
Project Need- If your requirements are generic and want something that features standard plugins and components to meet the needs then think of choosing between Development Platforms like Joomla, Drupal or WordPress. And if your needs are specific and require custom programming then the choice must be on the other side of the frameworks, like, Zend, Cake PHP, Code Igniter, Yii Frameworks etc.
Robust Architecture- At present most of the frameworks implement Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. So, web developers require to compare, ponder and choose one with the stricter implementation of MVC. For eg: frameworks like Zend have implemented MVC loosely and allow the developers to modify the design while Yii, have a strict implementation of MVC.
Performance Support- One of the cheap and effective ways of improving the overall performance of a web application is Caching. Frameworks need to provide a mechanism to handle Cache and hence improve performance effectively.
Security- In order to avoid application vulnerabilities like Cross-Site Scripting Prevention (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery Prevention (CSRF), Cookie Attack prevention, choose a Framework that features robust mechanisms.
Best PHP Frameworks to consider
·Laravel Framework- The comprehensive framework is designed to build applications using the MVC architecture. Apart from this, it offers a wide range of benefits such as organizing files and codes, best documentation, high level of abstraction, tons of out of the box functionality, strong encryption packages and so more.
·CodeIgniter- Another powerful PHP framework featuring a very small footprint. It is specially meant for developers who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. The list of pros comprises of developer friendly framework, no need for special dependencies or supports, ability to use normal web hosting services well, good documentation and LTS, etc.
·CakePHP- The framework builds web applications simpler, faster with less code requirement. It is even known as a powerful scaffolding system that makes building both small and complex systems simpler, easier and, of course, tastier. Build fast, grow solid with CakePHP.
·Symfony- Built on top of the Symfony Components- The framework acts like a set of decoupled and reusable components on which the best PHP applications are built, such as Drupal, phpBB, and eZ Publish. High performance, stability, well documented, maintained, supportive and mature are some of the most compelling benefits offered by the framework.
·Zend Framework- It is a collection of professional PHP packages incorporating more than 158 million installations. Particulary, this framework is used in the development of web applications and services using PHP 5.6+ and provides 100% object-oriented code using a broad spectrum of language features.
All of the above-mentioned PHP frameworks are widely used in the web arena. Most trusted names in PHP development companies like eTatvaSoft endeavor empower businesses by offering services on all platforms.