Top 10 Most Widely Used PHP Frameworks Today

PHP is known as one of the most powerful and popular programming languages in the world. Ever since it appeared as a short snippet inside an HTML file, PHP has attracted developers building websites and web apps of a certain complexity. PHP frameworks give developers a relatively complete solution for a more natural way of working. Below, we share the top PHP framework frameworks widely used to develop websites.

What is a PHP framework?

The term “frameworks” refers to a library: a collection of files containing many basic functions, developed by web programming companies. Framework gives you a ready-made system that makes programming easier through built-in functions and structures. You don’t have to write common code that has been used many times before.

A PHP framework is a pre-built library with many functions and modules for building a project. It also makes projects faster and easier to develop, reduces basic errors and makes applications more stable.

Why use a PHP framework?

Utilities and libraries

A PHP framework provides a full set of utilities and libraries such as input/output filters, email, cookie handling…

Using MVC

MVC makes code easier to create and more maintainable. MVC is an abbreviation of three letters:

• M (Models): communicates directly with the database system.
• V (Views): how things are displayed on the page; it holds the page templates.
• C (Controllers): where everything is tied together and page requests are handled.

Write code faster, with fewer errors

Because PHP is an open language, PHP code is relatively easy to learn. So a PHP framework is not too hard either: you will write code faster, saving more time and making fewer errors than with plain PHP code.

Community support

A large, strong community stands behind PHP frameworks. You can easily discuss and share the difficulties you run into. A PHP framework lets you talk directly with veteran developers and get their help solving hard problems.

Career opportunities

Thanks to their accuracy, PHP frameworks are becoming more and more of a trend. Businesses trust them more, which opens up more opportunities for you when you know PHP frameworks.

Top 10 most popular PHP frameworks today

PHP Framework Laravel

• Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks. It helps developers write code simply and easily, and comes with full documentation. Laravel has a huge ecosystem with many hosting and deployment platforms. Laravel’s official websites, through Laracasts, offer many tutorials.
• Laravel has many features. It has very clean Blade templates, which use custom tags and functions to separate code better. Laravel also includes its own development environment called

Laravel brings many advantages: fast speed, automatic organization of files and code, specific and clear documentation, a simple ORM model… However, it still has drawbacks: it uses many database queries and does not work on shared hosting.

Symfony

Symfony was introduced in 2005 with high reliability. It has a broad developer community with many enthusiastic fans.

Symfony uses an extended MVC; it is a single framework that follows PHP standards and web standards. Symfony is regarded as a set of PHP libraries that help with many tasks such as customizing objects, creating forms, authentication, routing, templating…

Symfony’s website is where you can get an overall view of how other developers get their work done with this convenient framework.

Symfony has many advantages and suits large-scale projects (because it is easy to install). Symfony is stable and independent of the database system, so you can easily reuse PHP components. In addition, Symfony is very flexible and can be integrated into larger projects such as Drupal.

That said, Symfony has drawbacks: it focuses heavily on large projects, so smaller ones can run into difficulties; it is slow because Symfony delegates everything to the developer; and its security mechanism is not easy to use.

PHP Framework Cake PHP

CakePHP appeared in 2005 and is one of the popular PHP frameworks because it is constantly updated and keeps up with the times with many utilities. It is fairly approachable for beginners.

CakePHP has an impressive, intuitive showcase and powers the websites of big names such as Express, BMW and Hyundai. It is also an excellent tool for building highly secure web apps, protecting against SQL injection, CSRF (cross-site request forgery), XSS (cross-site scripting) and many other threats.

CakePHP’s standout advantages are: simple, easy to install, good security features, many supported ports, and very fast framework building.

Phalcon

Phalcon (also known as a Fullstack Framework) is the fastest PHP framework, with high performance and the lowest memory use. Phalcon is written in programming languages C and C++, so its architecture is optimized and reduces the drawbacks of MVC. Phalcon is also very easy to use.

Phalcon’s advantages include: a full set of utilities, high security, auto loading and developer friendliness. It is also very quick to install. Its drawback, however, is that it is open source not as free-form as Laravel.

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is one of the simple, powerful PHP frameworks, with a history dating back to 2006. Installing CodeIgniter is very quick and needs only minimal configuration, which saves on extra costs. CodeIgniter runs well on most hosting and sharing platforms. It is very fast and easy to read.

CodeIgniter’s advantages: easy-to-understand, clear documentation; developer-friendly; works well with other non-MVC frameworks. Its weakness is that it still has few libraries.

Zend

Zend is a PHP framework built on an agile approach and is ideal for developers building complex websites.

Zend has many features, such as an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor supporting front-end technologies (CSS, HTML, JavaScript), a cryptographic coding tool, online debugging and the PHP Unit testing tool, and it also connects to Database Wizard… Because it is built with the Agile method, Zend Framework delivers high-quality apps to customers.

Despite its many advantages, Zend still demands a certain skill level. So you need to think carefully before choosing it.

Yii 2

Yii2 was developed from Yii 1. It has been around for quite a while as a PHP framework, but it is still continuously updated and supported. It gives you a fairly clear, logical code foundation because it is fully object-oriented and follows the DRY (don’t repeat yourself) coding principle.

Yii2 has a powerful code generator that lets users prototype quickly and work object-oriented with ease, and a web-based interface that lets you flexibly generate the code you want.

Yii2’s standout advantages: good security, more improvements, more flexibility and fast processing. Its drawback is that its code is not lightweight.

Fat-Free PHP Framework

Fat-Free is a very simple PHP framework that is light on the server; it supports multilingual applications and caching. Fat-Free has many plugins, many libraries and smooth routing.

Fat-Free’s advantages: fast speed, small footprint, suitable for multilingual applications; OpenID and processing support. Its main drawback is that it is outdated and offers nothing new compared with other PHP frameworks.

Slim

Slim is a PHP micro-framework that gives you everything you need. Slim lets PHP developers quickly build web applications, API simply. Slim is also very powerful.

Slim’s advantages: easy to learn and easy to use; a perfect PHP framework for web applications small web apps; plenty of documentation… which makes it user-friendly.

Fuel PHP

FuelPHP is a flexible PHP framework with everything built in. FuelPHP supports not only the conventional MVC design pattern but also its advanced version (HMVC – Hierarchical Model-View-Controller) at the structural level. As a result, it doesn’t take up much space or time.

FuelPHP ensures security by providing features such as input and URL filtering and output encoding; it also has a certified framework with many special features.

FuelPHP’s advantages: it can protect against vulnerabilities, provides solutions for end-to-end web projects of varied sizes, and has very good security.

PHP programming gets much easier when you use PHP Framework. We hope that, with what we have shared above, you can make the right choice among PHP frameworks. You can start programming your project right away with one of the PHP frameworks above if you already have web hosting. Practice is always the best way to learn.