Friday 24th January 2014 Spotlight on Symfony
Next up in our framework review is the ever-popular Symfony, which is now well into its second stable version (2.4.1, released in early January of this year). Symfony2 captured a 10.62% share of the developers polled on Sitepoint at the end of 2013, making it the third-most popular framework among the responding PHP developers. It has achieved this placement with good reason, as it's widely used across the web, providing a mixture of robust community support and feature-rich libraries.
One of the major strengths of Symfony is the modular nature of the software, which allows for a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to development, as it is itself modular from the ground up. In short, it plays well with almost any other standard component of PHP that you're comfortable using in your development process. It's arguably the most feature-rich framework that we've looked at so far, but that comes with a bit of a downside when it comes to bloat. Even the developers who voted it up so high in the standings at Sitepoint were the first to admit that it lagged well behind others when it came to performance metrics, which should be a concern for many developers looking for a slightly more robust framework.
Thursday 09th January 2014 Focus on Phalcon
According to the Sitepoint poll of PHP programmers we mentioned a few weeks ago, the second-most popular framework after Laravel was Phalcon. This is a fairly remarkable achievement, considering that the framework itself is only about 2 years ago, near the beginning of 2012. As the internet grows by leaps and bounds, and traffic grows right along with it, there's bound to be a greater and greater focus on performance issues, and this where Phalcon really distinguishes itself from more typical PHP frameworks: as its documentation says, "Phalcon is an effort to build the fastest framework for PHP."
The success has driven development fairly quickly as well, and Phalcon 2.0 is in the works, with the first alpha version already released. There are a fair number of changes under the hood, which should ease the concerns of some developers who have resisted Phalcon and other C extension frameworks for the simple fact that they don't know C very well and aren't keen to learn. This made it very difficult to do any sort of bug fixing, in the unlikely event that something went wrong. The new version of Phalcon has the majority of its behind-the-scenes processes recoded in a language called Zephir, an open-source language that compiles and runs with a speed similar to C. If you're interested in helping test-drive the alpha version of 2.0, they're always looking for more assistance!
Monday 30th December 2013 A Look at Laravel
Frameworks, frameworks frameworks - like the old adage about real estate locations, frameworks tend to be on the tip of every PHP developers tongue these days. The relative merits of each one are up for debate, and many developers fiercely defend their chosen framework against any possible slight, real or imagined. While many contend that it's more important to choose the right framework based on the particulars of a given project, there are still wide disparities in the usage of the various options. As we saw in our look at the usage statistics that are the obligatory part of the 'end of year' type blog posts, a clear frontrunner has emerged from the PHP framework pack in 2013 and outpaced all the rest: Laravel.
So whether you're a new PHP developer looking for a framework to whet your appetite or a framework-weary old hand, you'll likely be able to find something to catch your interest in the Laravel framework.
Tuesday 24th December 2013 PHP Frameworks: 2013 Roundup and Looking Ahead
As 2013 comes to a close and we reach the season of holidays, the new year, and year-end statistical roundups, many people are curious about the state of the PHP framework debate. As with many debates among programmers, the opinions are often loud and tenacious, and understandably so - it tends to irritate us when other people don't see the same advantages that we do (ah, the perpetual design versus development debate). With that in mind, one of the best ways to compare the relative metrics of the available PHP frameworks is to look at how many people are using each one over the course of the last year.
In order to choose the right framework, you need to know each one of them, and be familiar with the pros and cons of each one - so make 2014 a year of experimentation and expanding your horizons, and you'll soon see that blindly picking one framework and sticking with it can be a time-consuming mistake. Be flexible, and have a happy new year!
Saturday 14th December 2013 Symfony Gets Boost from SensioLabs FundingMost PHP programmers are familiar with the value of using frameworks in their coding projects. As a result, there are now quite a number to choose from, but one of the most popular and widespread is the open source PHP framework Symfony. While the project is open source, it was originally developed way back in 2005 by a team led by Fabien Potencier that formed a startup in France last year, SensioLabs. This same firm recently completed a round of financing from venture capital firm CM-CIC Private Capital, to the tune of $7 million USD.
Thursday 07th November 2013 Do You Really Need a PHP Framework?.jpg)
We've discussed various PHP frameworks in the past here, as they can be incredibly useful tools for developers. Instead of recreating entire libraries of code that already exist, making use of a framework can save you days or even weeks of coding - and if you choose the right one, they offer an incredible amount of stability and security. Numerous popular frameworks have huge communities behind them, constantly monitoring the code base, updating it regularly, and plugging security holes and other issues that would quickly become overwhelming for a single person.
The value you'll derive from a framework really depends on how you code and the types of projects you work on. If you're working on smaller scale projects, you will probably end up with your own segments of code that can be recycled for various future projects, much in the same way as a framework operates, but without all the tedious issues and unnecessary features that can make working with a framework a hassle. However, if you're regularly working on large scale projects that require the pinnacle of stability and security, a well-chosen PHP framework can be your new best friend.
Tuesday 17th September 2013 Selecting the Right PHP Framework for Beginners The primary concern about selecting a framework is to ensure that it has an active community behind it, as that's what creates the strength of a framework. Frameworks let you quickly and easily reuse code for many common functions and situations, letting you focus on the areas of your application that are specific to your situation. As you can guess, this means that the more people use and contribute to a framework, the more robust and useful it will be. When you build an application using a framework, your code is inherently dependent on the security and stability of the entire framework codebase, so it can be critical to stay on top of any potential exploits or vulnerabilities that are discovered, and an active community can make this much easier. The next most important consideration is the quality of documentation within the framework. We've all spent many wasted hours trying to understand another programmer's undocumented code, and with a framework the problem can be 10 times worse. Typically, most frameworks have decent documentation, but it's worth exploring to see which documentation you find easiest to understand and work with. What clicks for some coders won't work for others, so be sure to check this out. Finally, if you're looking for a framework to help you out with a small, single project, you might want to reconsider - frameworks can often add a great deal of complexity (not to mention execution time), which can make them unwieldy for smaller one-off applications. Even still, however, they can offer you some excellent reusable code that might make things simpler, and if you plan on doing a good deal of PHP coding, then learning a framework early on can save you hours of hassle and reinventing the wheel. Now that you've understood the basic considerations of framework selection, visit Wikipedia's comparison of the various PHP frameworks here and choose one that you're comfortable with. The best framework in the world isn't any use if it you don't enjoy making use of it!
If you spend a great deal of time working with PHP in your development process, it makes sense to consider utilising an established framework for a number of reasons - namely, writing your code faster and more cleanly. However when it comes down to actually choosing a framework, opinions are wildly varied; fans of some frameworks almost reach the point of religious zeal when it comes down to one choice over another. For those of you just starting out with frameworks, this can create an overwhelming and conflicting set of opinions, so let's take a step back and discuss a few basic considerations about what you hope to achieve with your framework.
