Frameworks are making your life easier, since they take care of common tasks you without them would have to repeat for every project or even within projects.
I have assembled a small list of promising candidates for you, they may not be the most commonly used, but they teach best practices, principles like MVC and have communities and thereby helping hands on the internet.
This post was originally written for the semester blog of my class, therefore it also focusses on the types of database queries supported by the frameworks, we have a dedicated module in SQL and databases, which is why it is pretty relevant to the students of my semester.
Update: I’ve started blogging about some of the below in their separate articles, see them here: PHP + MVC at jonathanmh
CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is the base for a successful Content Management System, Expression Engine, which is used by people like a list apart.
I know some of your classmates work with this, so you’d have live support.
CodeIgniter Quick Facts
- Architecture: MVC (nightly with HMVC support)
- License: OSL the:license.txt
- SQL Queries: Active Records Support
CakePHP
CakePHP has been around for quite a while and they have gather community and lots of solid code in that time.
CakePHP Quick Facts
- Architecture: MVC
- License: MIT
- SQL Queries: solid looking CakePHP functions
Yii
Yii is another mature framework that focusses on performance. It’s feature rich and can automate some of the CRUD work for you.
Yii Quick Facts
FuelPHP
FuelPHP is a fairly fresh project, but provides a lightweight solution. It comes with oil, a useful command line utility.
FuelPHP Quick Facts
- Architecture: HMVC
- License: MIT
- SQL Queries: plain SQL, or query builder
Laravel
Laravel is yet another aspiring and lightweight framework, which I’ve found through some features in tutorials on net.tutsplus.com.
Laravel Quick Facts
- Architecture: MVC as far as I could see
- License: MIT
- SQL Queries: plain SQL, or query builder
Symfony
Symfony is a little more enterprise looking framework, it’s very feature rich and well acknowledges among big web app builders.
Symfony Quick Facts
Kohana
Kohana I have never tried, but it pops up in tutorials and mentions around the web. Their documentation seems to be lacking a couple of points and some links are broken, so it seems a little smaller than the other candidates.
Kohana Quick Facts
- Architecture: HMVC
- License: BSD
- SQL Queries: Kohana Query Builder
Zend Framework
The Zend Framework does only get an honorable mention here, because of their proprietary license.
Turns out it’s actually a very permissive BSD license.