Top 5 Fastest-Growing PHP Web Development Frameworks

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. What is a PHP Framework?
3. Why use a PHP Framework?

Easy to maintain
Secure
Less code
Faster development
Libraries for common tasks

4. What you should look for in a Framework?
5. Top 5 Fastest-Growing PHP Frameworks

Laravel
Codeigniter
Symfony
CakePHP
Yii

6. Final Thoughts

Introduction

Are you planning to create a website in 2022 having all the features and functionalities? If so, then you need to focus on choosing the best PHP framework that is perfectly suitable for your business requirements and saves you both money and time.

Developing a website from scratch requires you to invest a good amount of time and effort and by doing so, you can regenerate functions that have already been designed before and are available for free. So implementing them in your project and concentrating on creating a world-class and business-related product for your business will be a great idea, isn’t it?

A PHP development framework is a foundation for creating your application without regenerating the wheel. But, choosing a reliable and robust PHP framework for your project is a challenging task. Before the development process, make sure to analyze the advantages and drawbacks of all the available PHP frameworks and choose a service provider that offers you the following services:

(Taken from eTatvasoft’s PHP Development Services page)

In this post, we’re going to help you in searching for the best PHP frameworks for website development by addressing the top 5 options. But before that let’s get started by grabbing some basic information regarding PHP. So without any further ado, let’s get started!

What is a PHP Framework?

A PHP framework is a platform for developers that allows them to build web applications depending on their requirements and demands. Frameworks are useful because they speed up and normalize the software development process, easing doubts about how to start building an application.

If you’re using a PHP framework, you will end up saving a lot of time, eliminating the requirement to write repetitive code, and you will be able to develop web apps rapidly. You can use libraries that are related to code to perform the basic tasks and functions that help you to reduce using original code that you’re required to write from scratch when planning to develop an app.

Why use a PHP framework?

A PHP framework provides a basic structure for the development of applications. Using frameworks really helps developers as it speeds up the development process and fulfills their performance needs.

Let’s discuss some good reasons for using PHP frameworks:

1. Easy to maintain

As we all know about the power of PHP, it encourages refactoring of code and enables DRY development. The consequent, more haggard codebase needs less maintenance. And you’re not required to worry about how you will maintain the core framework, as it will be taken care of by the developers.

2. Secure

With the increasing popularity of PHP development, security threads are also more often seen which includes cross-site request forgery, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. In such cases, you must take the right steps to guard your website code else your apps will be vulnerable.

Utilizing a PHP framework is not an alternative for writing secure code, but it reduces the chance of having unauthorized access to your site and guards against common threats.

3. Less code

If you’re using the in-built functions provided by the PHP framework, it means you’re not required to write so much original code.

4. Faster development

As we all know, PHP frameworks offer in-built support for libraries and tools that developers can use to make the process of application development easier and faster. If we take the CakePHP framework as an instance, it has the Bake CL tool which allows you to create the skeleton code required for your application.

5. Libraries for common tasks

Many tasks are performed by developers that are common in every application such as CRUD operations, form validation, data sanitization, and much more. To save your time, don’t create your own functions, instead, reuse the existing ones that are already available in the framework.

What you should look for in a Framework?

Here are a few things that you must be looking for while picking a PHP framework that suits your project requirements:

Support: PHP offers great support as it has experienced developers and professionals working with them. Online resources and documentation should be available as it helps you to navigate problems you might encounter.
Philosophy: PHP frameworks align with your business requirements and help you to achieve those goals.
The popularity of framework and community size: PHP frameworks are community-driven, so it makes sure to improve and maintain it and provides massive benefits.
Sustainability: If the framework is well-maintained, it will support your stack and technology in the future.

If you’re confused in choosing the right PHP framework, for better decision-making, it is recommended to test them out before implementing them into your project. Don’t try each of them, but just narrow down two to three options and play around with them. By doing this, you might get a clear picture of frameworks and they might surprise you.

Top 5 Fastest-Growing PHP Frameworks

1. Laravel

According to Urjashee Shaw, web developer at Simpalm, a PHP development company, “Amongst all the PHP frameworks, Laravel has had continuous popularity since it was established. And currently, it is one of the most widely used PHP frameworks for web development. It has 60+k stars on GitHub and is a top-performing framework that offers great features and advantages such as ease of use, faster development, a rich feature set, and much more.

If you’ve ever worked with Laravel, you must know that it is an open-source web development framework which means it is available for free. Laravel has strong support from the PHP developer community.

Using the Laravel development services, you can securely build applications according to your requirements and desires as it uses the MVC architecture. It uses functional programming and an object-oriented strategy that allows you to develop highly modular code-bases for your software. This segmented architecture makes the framework highly extensible so that developers can easily use first-party packages and ship products to the market in no time. The in-built authentication features provided by Laravel can leverage encrypted data storage for enhanced security. Despite this, it helps to boost the performance of your applications, optimize the garbage, and enhance task execution.

Pros of Laravel

Laravel offers great security features to guard your website from cybercrime attacks. Using this, developers can easily configure websites to boost security and guard sites from cyber attacks.
It supports a wide range of modern features for your website such as encryption and reset passwords.
Compared to other web development frameworks, Laravel is cost-effective as it is an open-source framework so there is no cost at all except for hiring developers to develop your site.
Numerous developers across the world prefer using Laravel as it offers excellent in-built templates which makes the process flexible and easier for developers.

Cons of Laravel

With Laravel, you need to create a separate admin panel that will manage and edit content. So, if multiple stakeholders need to access the application’s settings, then using a CMS might be a great option.
Lack of continuation between versions.

2. CodeIgniter

Another great PHP framework in our list is CodeIgniter. It is an open-source rapid application development framework. Unlike other PHP frameworks, CodeIgniter offers a variety of great libraries that will allow you to accelerate PHP web app development. You’ll be surprised to know that it is considered one of the most promising and useful PHP frameworks.

CodeIgniter helps PHP developers by providing them with a simple way to implement modular methods and get any explicit function. You can easily develop feature-rich, secure, and large-scale dynamic web apps due to their friendly URLs.

Pros of CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is a lightweight PHP framework that allows developers to focus on website performance optimization.
Whether you’re a beginner or experienced PHP programmer, CodeIgniter works well for both as it does not require extra effort and time.
You can easily set up and use CodeIgniter.
All PHP frameworks follow the MVC pattern, but here the scenario is different as CodeIgniter does not follow the MVC pattern.
It boosts the speed of developing large-scale applications having complex project requirements by using MVC in a whole different way.

Cons of CodeIgniter

It does not emphasize code maintainability which means there is no support for modular separation of code by default.
Compared to other PHP frameworks, CodeIgniter libraries are not as comprehensive as others, which is not good.

3. Symfony

In the list of top 5 PHP frameworks, we have Symfony at number 3 for web development. It has received more than 20k GitHub stars and provides a set of 50 stand-alone reusable PHP components which makes the process of web app development faster and simple.

Symfony is a well-organized and feature-rich PHP framework that allows you to build microservices, web apps, and APIs in the easiest way possible. Not only this, but it also offers 30 helpful components that facilitate the development process.

4. CakePHP

CakePHP is an open-source RAD framework that follows the MVC pattern. It allows you to build feature-rich and world-class web applications from scratch in the least time required. Unlike other PHP frameworks, CakePHP is quite simple to use and requires minimal configuration to build visually impressive web applications.

Despite this, it minimizes the requirements which makes the task simpler for programmers to create web apps without loss of flexibility and compromising on quality.

5. Yii

Lastly, we have Yii. It is a high-performance and component-based PHP web development framework that allows developers to build modern web applications rapidly. If your requirements are complicated and have large-scale applications, then it will be a great choice if you choose Yii for your project.

Apart from this, it enables maximum reusability in programming and accelerates the process of application development.

Final Thoughts

Do you have limited time for developing your PHP application, but are confused about choosing the right framework for your project? If so, then get the most out of a PHP framework and make sure you have great knowledge about PHP and a good understanding of all the concepts such as command line, MVC architecture, and object-oriented syntax.

PHP offers various frameworks for web development and choosing one of them is a tedious task. So to ease your task, we have narrowed down a list of the top 5 PHP frameworks that offer out-of-the-box features and functionalities for your project.

If you loved reading our article and found it useful, then it would be great for us if you help in reaching a larger audience by sharing the post on Facebook or Twitter.

Happy reading!