The PHP Framework landscape is quite cluttered at the moment, and sorting your way through the various blogs/forums out there comparing them is equally confusing. Part of me wishes that there were fewer choices, but all of me wishes all of the choices were a bit more mature.
I'll try and clutter the landscape a bit more with my own opinions on some of them, but first let me list some of my must-haves from a framework:
- Object-Oriented. Since PHP 5's rework of classes, I have been using them extensively and can barely exist without them.
- Easy View implementation. I'm tired of writing Javascript & HTML. Make it as easy as possible, implementing OO to its full extent.
- Flexible Model implementation. I'm willing to give up some ease-of-use when it comes to the Model, if it means a lot more flexibility. I am a competent SQL writer and database modeller, so if I wish to implement something complex in the database, the Model must allow it.
- Should have as many of these features as possible: user authentication, access control lists, robust session handling, database independence, easy SOAP/REST implementation, easy and robust AJAX.
- Robust, complete documentation
- Responsive user community
- No separate templating system! PHP does a sufficient job of templating, especially if the data and view components are simple enough. I don't want or need to learn Smarty or something else.
Zend Framework
A bit less than what I would consider a framework. More like a group of a bunch of libraries. Has classes for handling many of the common web tasks (authentication, database, sessions, etc), but lacks the View implementation I desire. I really wish to make UI stuff super easy.
Cake
Cake seems to be very full featured, and I keep coming back to it every couple weeks hoping I was wrong in my last impression. It's View implementation seems very immature.
Symfony
One of Symfony's strongpoints seems to be the Model layer. It utilizes a third-party ORM module for implementation of much of the Model layer. Currently they are using Propel, but it appears they will be switching to Doctrine. Both libraries look very nice, even supporting things like Presorted Traversal Trees (complex parent-child relations). Once again, though, it appears its View implementation is weak. Reminds me a bit of the CGI module in Perl.
Prado
Prado was my first choice for a framework. It made things like scaffolding very easy, had some nice looking View controls (HTML text area, for example), and very easy data binding for controls. I like its View and Controller implementations. At first, I really liked its Model implementation, but after I spent a couple days with it, gave up on it. They offer two different methods of implementing the model- Active Records or SQLMaps. From the documentation, it appears you can combine the two, which would provide a near perfect implementation. But I had lots of difficulty doing so. Also, while the project has decent documentation, their user community appears to be limited. One of my biggest complaints about Prado is it felt like I wasn't programming in PHP anymore. Prado is still one of my top choices for a PHP framework, and I may revisit it at a later date.
QCodo
I have currently settled on QCodo, but I'm not far enough in to say with any certainty that I won't give up on it as well. QCodo is a bit unique among the frameworks, in that it is a code-generating framework. This means that you point it at your database and it generates the code to access it for you. However, when it generates code, it generates it as two classes. The "generated" class and then a template for your implementation. The generated class can be re-generated any time you wish from the database (add a field to the table in the database, regenerate the code, and the new column is available in the corresponding object). The template class it creates subclasses the generated class, so you can reimplement or augment and functions you wish. This makes it easy to implement business logic at the model layer without actually touching the database layer. QCodo's View & Controller implementations are also very nice. HTML elements are created as objects. AJAX enabled controls are written exactly the same way as non-AJAX controls. I encourage you to view their AJAX dashboard demo.
In the end, none of these frameworks meets all of my needs and desires. QCodo's major shortcomings include lack of authentication and access control and a lack of flexibility on the model layer. So, I am going to piece together the framework I want. Use QCodo's View and Controller layers, Doctrine for the Model Layer. Additionally, I will attempt to utilize some of the classes in the Zend Framework, notably the Authentication and Access Control modules. I will post updates as my work progresses.
