Best php web server frameworks?

Hi,

I'm new to php - are there any listings of web server frameworks out
there? I'd like to know which ones have the most use and have proven
themselves at least somewhat.

I'm looking for something in php that'd give the business logic
modelling and templating that you'd get, say, from Java servlets +
Freemarker.

thanks,
Robb

Robert wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm new to php - are there any listings of web server frameworks out
> there? I'd like to know which ones have the most use and have proven
> themselves at least somewhat.
>
> I'm looking for something in php that'd give the business logic
> modelling and templating that you'd get, say, from Java servlets +
> Freemarker.
>
> thanks,
> Robb

Hi Robb,

If you are new to PHP, it might make sense to first learn PHP itself before
jumping into a framework. IMHO many frameworks give you a good start, but
if you miss understanding of the underlying language, you'll hit your head
many times.
If you get familiar with PHP, you can develop your own
classes/functionlibs/etc yourself. Many good classes are out there (PEAR
eg) for you to use. Personally I find it much more satisfying to write my
own stuff and plug in classes where I need them.

As you can hear, I am not a big fan of frameworks. :P
Anyway, Cake is a PHP framework based on the much appraised Ruby-on-Rails
framework:
http://cakephp.org

From their homepage:
-----------------------------------
Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known
design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front
Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework
that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web
applications, without any loss to flexibility.
-----------------------------------

Good luck!

Regards,
Erwin Moller

Robert wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm new to php - are there any listings of web server frameworks out
> there? I'd like to know which ones have the most use and have proven
> themselves at least somewhat.
>
> I'm looking for something in php that'd give the business logic
> modelling and templating that you'd get, say, from Java servlets +
> Freemarker.
>
> thanks,
> Robb

After having just researched this myself over a couple of days I thought I'd
drop in my 2p worth.

Most frameworks (or templating systems) are a trade off between already
built functionality and flexibility - and are somewhere along the scale of

Mambo (which is great)-> horde -> cake-> tiny but strong -> P4A -> RAW php
and HTML.


There are loads more and I may have not got the order quite correct.

Eventually I settled on using Smarty and also to use the PEAR libraries.

This allows complete control over what is being written plus Smarty
templating works really well.

For example I have a single HTML template for the web application. On each
page I use PHP to generate HTML to display a form or results. All I do is
set the output HTML to a single variable called $content and then display
the template. The main div contains the line {$content} so my content is
displayed in the main div.

To change something on every page I just change something on the template.

And the PEAR libraries are really useful for prevention of the reinventing
of the wheel. For example the Auth library means you can easily carry out
authentication for your web application. Also, the mail_queue library
means that it's easy to put emails you want to send into a DB and have
separate cron run code to actually send them.

This is great for the testing phase.

It takes a few days to get Smarty and PEAR set up and understood but I feel
the effort is well worth it.

Kevin

You should add eXtc Web Developer (http://www.mgateway.com) to your
list of frameworks to check out - it's actually not specific to PHP as
it will cross-generate ASP.Net and JSP also.


On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:22:06 +0100, kevin bailey
<kbailey@freewayprojects.com> wrote:

>Robert wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm new to php - are there any listings of web server frameworks out
>> there? I'd like to know which ones have the most use and have proven
>> themselves at least somewhat.
>>
>> I'm looking for something in php that'd give the business logic
>> modelling and templating that you'd get, say, from Java servlets +
>> Freemarker.
>>
>> thanks,
>> Robb
>
>After having just researched this myself over a couple of days I thought I'd
>drop in my 2p worth.
>
>Most frameworks (or templating systems) are a trade off between already
>built functionality and flexibility - and are somewhere along the scale of
>
>Mambo (which is great)-> horde -> cake-> tiny but strong -> P4A -> RAW php
>and HTML.
>
>
>There are loads more and I may have not got the order quite correct.
>
>Eventually I settled on using Smarty and also to use the PEAR libraries.
>
>This allows complete control over what is being written plus Smarty
>templating works really well.
>
>For example I have a single HTML template for the web application. On each
>page I use PHP to generate HTML to display a form or results. All I do is
>set the output HTML to a single variable called $content and then display
>the template. The main div contains the line {$content} so my content is
>displayed in the main div.
>
>To change something on every page I just change something on the template.
>
>And the PEAR libraries are really useful for prevention of the reinventing
>of the wheel. For example the Auth library means you can easily carry out
>authentication for your web application. Also, the mail_queue library
>means that it's easy to put emails you want to send into a DB and have
>separate cron run code to actually send them.
>
>This is great for the testing phase.
>
>It takes a few days to get Smarty and PEAR set up and understood but I feel
>the effort is well worth it.
>
>Kevin

---
Rob Tweed
M/Gateway Developments Ltd

The Pursuit of Productivity : http://www.mgateway.com

On Oct 12, 2:03 pm, "Robert" <r...@acm.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to php - are there any listings of web server frameworks out
> there? I'd like to know which ones have the most use and have proven
> themselves at least somewhat.
>
> I'm looking for something in php that'd give the business logic
> modelling and templating that you'd get, say, from Java servlets +
> Freemarker.
>
> thanks,
> Robb

We started using the Zend framework (http://framework.zend.com) in our
project, but it's still in early development, and there a lot of
bugfixes that you can only get from the CVS. The separation of
Controller/View logic wasn't that great at the time.

We settled on cakephp, but if speed is critical, you may want to
consider kevin's advice and go with smarty+php libraries.

Good luck on your project, Robb!

tg wrote:
> We started using the Zend framework (http://framework.zend.com) in our
> project, but it's still in early development, and there a lot of
> bugfixes that you can only get from the CVS. The separation of
> Controller/View logic wasn't that great at the time.
>
> We settled on cakephp, but if speed is critical, you may want to
> consider kevin's advice and go with smarty+php libraries.
>
> Good luck on your project, Robb!

Great - thanks for the pointers, everyone.

Try Plain PHP. Smarty is nice but there are times I'm glad I didn't
use it for the template. You also could try Flexy, being Pear-based
ease of install and update.

If you want a Rails-type framework, use Symfony. It's the furthest
along, has the most mature caching mechanisms.

If you just want to write the least amount of code and have business
apps of 30 pages and 17 dropdowns, etc, better use ATK.

The Rails-types are not as focused as ATK on the actual problem with
business apps, IMHO. The problem being they are the most expensive to
develop at the same time have the least value payoff. Have to get the
cost down, not worry about how beautiful your syntax is, which seems
to be the overriding preoccuopation of RoR (that and the rockstar
leaders poking fun at hopeless Java, which is ironic because RoR very
much overreaching like Java). I don't need a framework syntax to
encode dev/test/prod setups, I need to crank out forms.

HTH