What's the best framework available?

TenaciousC

Forgive me if this might be in the wrong part of the forum.

I have recently been learning more about PHP Frameworks, specifically those that adhere to the MVC pattern. I have read docs/tutorials on Zend and Cake PHP, both of which seem too large for the small/medium sized projects I normally do (plus, even though I followed it to a T, I couldn't get Zend's tutorial to work).

I am currently in the process of looking at Code Igniter and it's fork Kohana. These seem to be pretty intuitive and not as large as the ones I mentioned above.

I suppose my question comes down to asking people their opinion on these frameworks, and to find out what seems to be the best all around.

cahva

I havent used the CI's fork Kohana(just found about that last week, will try that soon 🙂 ) but I've been using code igniter now about six months and I can tell you its a real pleasure to work with! I think its the first framework that really showed me the benefits of MVC(others have failed miserably in that mission). I have to admit that CI has really inspired me for the past six months I've been using it and I have had a lot of fun coding with CI. It really gave me a productivity boost 🙂

I also tried to use Zend framework as the base of test site but found out that it was too much hassle and learning curve was a little too steep for me at the time. Ofcourse Zend has very nice features and fortunately its very easy to integrate Zend's classes to be used with CI.

I have tried couple of other frameworks too but none of them was as nice as CI(well Django gets close but thats not PHP 😉 ). Plus CI is a lot faster than the others(I found this comparison while ago).

I dont want to bash the others but atleast my vote goes for CI(and maybe Kohana later as it seems to be very good also and it is completely PHP5 from what I've read).

bpat1434

I haven't tried CI, Kohana, or Cake; however, I have used Zend extensively.

Zend isn't your typical "framework". Each component is able to stand on its own which means you can use their ACL or DB or Gdata extensions without actually using the entire library. So while there are probably around 100 or so files, you really can get away with just a few.

Now, I've found a setup that works extremely well, and keeps the framework "light". I've got a dedicated server and I put the framework in a shared folder "/usr/share/php/frameworks" which has the Zend folder with the framework inside. So any site can use the framework just by saying "include('Zend/*.php');" and it will work. So your application can be fairly lightweight, while the framework is maintained server-side to be the most up-to-date version.

I like the ZF mainly because it can be used independently from the rest of itself. But CodeIgnitor seems interesting and seems to fair better for performance.

TenaciousC

If I had a dedicated server, I might consider using Zend or Cake for all projects residing on that server. It would definitely make sense.

However, CI so far seems to be my favorite. Kohana apparently has more features, but I find their documentation to be a tad confusing.