January 11, 2019
Is PHP still trending in 2019?
One might think that PHP is a thing of the past and is now only used by small enterprises. But this is quite far from the truth. For example, Facebook uses PHP to maintain and develop their internal systems. PHP powers the top CMS engines: WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. WordPress uses PHP to power its internals, which is powering more than 26% of the web.
PHP application development is based on an open source and cross-platform language, and it has one of the largest support communities.
Advantages of PHP frameworks for business software development
PHP frameworks use rapid application design (RAD) to avoid repetitive coding. Frameworks are a useful tool as they provide a structure and unified environment that will help you to build your projects faster and more efficiently. Using frameworks is also a good-overall web development practice which enhances scalability and long-term maintenance so that you can dedicate more time to building high-quality code.
At iWebServices , we’ve made an inventory of the frameworks we use with the best results in terms of performance and effectiveness, recommending them for enterprise software development. Most popular PHP frameworks are Laravel 5+, Symfony2+, Zend, Yii2+, Phalcon, and CakePHP, with Laravel gaining the most interest since 2016.
1. Laravel
Laravel is a relatively new framework which was created by Taylor Otwell in 2011. It simplifies the production process with its own migration system for manipulating database queries. It is preferred because of its clean and elegant PHP code and simplifying tasks such as authentication, routing, containerization, and queues. Laravel framework is extremely secure since it uses only hashed and salted password. It has a user-friendly dashboard (Laravel Horizon), Laravel Dusk for browser automation, Laravel Echo for event broadcasting.
Laravel’s Main Features
• It supports various database systems like Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, and SQLite
• Uses MVC controller
• Inherent Database Version control
• It has built-in unit testing and impressive readable syntax
• It has a local development environment called Homestead that is a packaged as a Vagrant box
• We can extend Laravel’s core functionality using add-ons
• We can Integrate Laravel with third-party libraries and platforms such as AWS
• It can run tasks asynchronously in the background to improve performance
• Laravel has huge community highly-active developers
2. Zend
Zend Framework is a collection of PHP packages with more than 200 million installations. Zend Framework Development is Robust and stable and is highly recommended for enterprise-level projects.
It has a vast variety of features which ease the development of quality applications for business clients and has partners such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe.
Zend is a very powerful and scalable development tool because of its standard set of libraries. It provides a 100% object-oriented code, high-performance MVC and easy-to-use database concept.
Zend Framework has many powerful features such as cryptographic coding tools, easy-to-use drag and drop editor with support for front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), instant online debugging PHP Unit testing tools, and a connected Database Wizard. Zend Framework was created with an Agile methodology that facilitates delivering high-quality apps to enterprise clients.
Zend’s Main Features
• Web & CLI Programming
• MVC Components
• Integrate Zend with external libraries easily
• An object-oriented web application framework
• Simple cloud API
• Session management
• Data encryption
• Flexible URI Routing
3. Yii
Yii Framework stands out due to its robust set of security features, which you can use create highly secure projects. It provides all the functionality that is required to ensure that your application is safe and secure, Right from input validation and output filtering to SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention. Due to its component-based architecture and sophisticated caching support, it is especially suitable for developing large-scale applications such as portals, forums, CMS, e-commerce projects.
Yii 2 comes with rich features like; MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding and testing. It provides excellent support for writing and running both unit and functionality tests, which based on PHP Unit and Selenium. It also works extremely well with third-party codes. It is designed in such a way that you can even use codes from PEAR or ZEND framework into your Yii Web Application. Yii Framework works well with JQuery and comes bundled with major Ajax-enabled widgets like auto-completion input field, Treeview, Data Grid etc which will allow you to write highly efficient and versatile UI. Yii is extremely extensible – you can customize nearly every piece of the core’s code.
Yii’s Main Features
• Excellent speed and performance
• Yii framework can be highly customized.
• Create secure websites and applications
• It allows developers to model database data in terms of objects and complexity of writing repetitive SQL statements.
You will find this article useful: Is React Native Really the Future of Mobile App Development
4. CakePHP
Although it is nearly a decade old, CakePHP is still one of the most popular PHP frameworks. CakePHP has big names in its portfolio, powering the websites of renowned brands like BMW, Hyundai, and Express. It is modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails and is distributed under the MIT License. Just like Yii, it is suitable for web apps that require a high level of security high-level of security, like commercial applications. That’s why it comes with many built-in security features such as input validation, SQL injection prevention, XSS (cross-site scripting) prevention, CSRF (cross-site request forgery) protection. CakePHP framework offers a flexible architecture for the development, maintenance, and rapid deployment of applications. Due to its simple and elegant toolkit is favorite for creating a feature-loaded web application.
CakePHP’s Main Features
• Modern framework, Supports PHP 5.5+
• Scaffolding system and Fast builds
• It has some great built-in features like Database Access, Caching, Validation, Authentication.
• Use CakePHP’s conventions to code projects faster
• It has various tools for security with functionalities like cross-site scripting prevention, SQL Injection prevention, SRF, and Form Validation.
• Good Documentation
• Actively developed
5. Codeigniter
CodeIgniter was developed by EllisLab, and presently it is a project of the British Columbia Institute of Technology. It is used for developing rapid web frameworks, which helps in the development of the dynamic websites in PHP. It is a light-weight PHP Framework with an easy installation process that requires minimal configuration. It uses the popular MVC controller approach and is known to be fast compared to other frameworks.
CodeIgniter’s Main Features
• It is a lightweight framework which is easy to use.
• Codeigniter framework is known for its simplicity and excellent documentation
• You can create scalable apps using the framework’s MVC-based architecture
Conclusion
With a big bucket of robust, stable and secure frameworks, PHP is a great backend tool for enterprise software development that complements modern frontend modern technologies. At iWebServices we have used these frameworks with great contempt to develop quality applications for our clients. Deciding on which PHP framework to use depends on a variety of factors like ease of use, features available, documentation, scalability, etc. Contact us for NO-OBLIGATION Consultation about choosing the PHP framework that suits your project’s requirements.
