There is no deficit of PHP frameworks nowadays for a web development company to choose from. They come in all shapes and sizes for developers with different hosting capabilities, skills, application needs, and development time-frames.
The common goal of all PHP frameworks is to make the development process faster and easier. PHP frameworks help to simplify complex coding problems by providing developers with a platform for developing powerful web applications in a short time. The PHP structure allows for rapid application development (RAD), which saves a lot of time and reduces the need to run coding from scratch, ensuring stable application development.
Without the help of a PHP infrastructure, developing mobile and web applications can challenging for beginners when it comes to writing code and creating a connection between a database and an application that is being developed from scratch. The use of the PHP Framework reduces the workload. The best thing about PHP frameworks is the ease of adaptation, as well as the ability to learn them faster compared to other programming languages.
Although, every developer that has ever worked with a framework before, knows that each of them is unique and should be chosen depending on the anticipated result. Below we will review the best frameworks out there in 2019 to provide everything you need to know to choose the best one for you.
Choosing a PHP Framework
Before making a choice in favor of one particular framework, you should consider its following characteristics:
- Functionalities and components;
- Development frequency;
- Learning curve;
- Community size.
You want to choose a framework that is easy to learn and provides fast development with good looking frontends. Let’s see which ones out of our Top 5 list suit these requirements the best, defining strengths and weaknesses of each of them.
Laravel
If you start searching for a PHP framework, this one will most likely come up first. Laravel owes its wide popularity to its easiness of use and wide range of inbuilt features.
Strengths
- Developer-friendliness (easy to learn);
- Innovative technology (relatively new tool);
- High speed of development;
- High security (strong encryption packages);
- Convenient files and code organization;
- Great documentation;
- MVC architecture (and PHP7);
- Unit testing (FAST on HHVM);
- Advanced out of the box functionality;
- Routing (the easiest to manage);
- ORM support;
- Large community.
Weaknesses
- Higher bugs possibility;
- Not easy to transfer legacy systems;
- Does lots of queries on the DB;
- Does not work on shared hosting plans.
Symfony
This tool will provide you with a rich variety of features. Symfony has earned a reputation of a reliable and mature PHP framework through the years.
Strengths
- High performance;
- Flexibility;
- Reliability;
- Great documentation, maintenance, and support;
- Large community.
Weaknesses
- Not an easy learning process;
- Reduced speed of development;
- No MVC support.
Phalcon
This tool is different in its coding style. Phalcon coding is based on C and C++, not holding it from providing an advanced set of development features you can use.
Strengths
- Easy to learn;
- Very high speed of development;
- Autoloading;
- Advanced security features;
- Traditional MVC code;
- Great documentation.
Weaknesses
- Not as open source as Laravel;
- Does not work on shared hosting plans;
- Does not work with HHVM.
Yii 2
It is one of the oldest PHP frameworks that provide support and efficiently to answer modern development needs. You can call Yii 2 a more developer-friendly competitor of Symfony 2 with its easy learning curve.
Strengths
- Easy to learn;
- Flexibility;
- High security;
- High speed of development;
- Variety of configuration;
- MVC and object-oriented;
- Availability to build small CRUD applications immediately.
Weaknesses
- The lack of built-in allowances;
- No AR queries;
- Too many libraries & dependencies;
- Doesn’t allow multiple relations built up.
CodeIgniter
If you need a powerful tool with advanced features, this one might be for you. CodeIgniter is appreciated among developers for allowing them to focus on creativity.
Strengths
- Developer friendliness;
- Standard databases use (such as MySQL);
- Easy to extend and customize;
- Supports Web Page and Database Caching;
- Good documentation and support;
- Requires little coding;
- Built-in security feature
Weaknesses
- Does no support code modular separation by default;
- Lacks exhaustive libraries that are built inside the framework.
Summary
There are many programming languages you can use, but PHP is still the best option for server-side scripting. However, even if you are a PHP professional, coding all parts of each new project will take a long time. However, if you choose the best PHP framework for your needs, you can skip a lot of the basics and go straight to the interesting part of developing a new project.
Although we have shortlisted top 5 PHP frameworks of 2019, you will have your own opinion on each of them, depending on the goals you have set for your project. Above are the main factors that might influence your choice. Consider them and decide which one is a match with your requirements.