# PHP framework for development



## thekreek (May 24, 2013)

Currently I'm trying to decide which PHP framework would be better to use for all my future projects, my top requirements are:


The framework needs to be lightweight (so it can run in a LEB)
ORM is a plus
Clean URL
i18n support
MVC compliant

So far my list has been reduced to the following frameworks:


Yii framework
Laravel 4
DooPHP
Symfony 2
Can you please share your opinions and suggestions, specially if you have work with any of them.


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## netnub (May 24, 2013)

CodeIgniter. 'nuff said.


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## Francisco (May 24, 2013)

The biggest problem i've had with CI is that you'll be hard strapped finding an IDE that supports it properly. IDE's won't know that $this->Your_Model actually refs to models/your_model.php or what have you so you don't get proper hinting.

Yii looked nice when I looked at it and it has a pretty crazy CRUD engine in place. My concern with frameworks like this is that you may very well end up spending a lot of time making it work 'outside' of the nice controls they've added.

CI's a slow changing framework since the group that made it uses it in their own major project so they don't want to be rewriting large parts if they don't want to.

I know Dregond in #frantech was doing a lot of projects in laravel and seemed to really enjoy it.

Francisco


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## jhadley (May 24, 2013)

I do everything in Symfony2 nowadays. Highly recommended.


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## netnub (May 24, 2013)

Francisco said:


> The biggest problem i've had with CI is that you'll be hard strapped finding an IDE that supports it properly. IDE's won't know that $this->Your_Model actually refs to models/your_model.php or what have you so you don't get proper hinting.
> 
> 
> Yii looked nice when I looked at it and it has a pretty crazy CRUD engine in place. My concern with frameworks like this is that you may very well end up spending a lot of time making it work 'outside' of the nice controls they've added.
> ...


For codeigniter use Sublime text 2.

I use sublime text 2 mostly, tried dreamweaver, phpdesigner, phpstorm.

PHPStorm is best for PHP in my opinion.

PHPDesigner is  waste of money.

Sublime is best for codeigniter.


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## telephone (May 24, 2013)

From your list, I'd go with Laravel 4 

In saying that though, I always pick the framework for the job:

- Large scale project -> Full-blown framework

- Medium project -> Think of the future. If you plan to vastly expand in the future (new features), then go with a full-blown framework

- Small project -> Micro framework

Here's some micro frameworks to look into:

- Slim -> Can be coupled with external libraries to provide additional features:

    - ReadbeanPHP or Idiorm & Paris for ORM

    - Twig for templating

- Silex (based on Symphony 2) -> If you're use to Symphony, then you'll have no problem switching between the two

- Fat-Free -> I tend to use this one for my small projects as it comes with everything I need (Docs are lacking at the moment, but it's being worked on)


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## walesmd (May 27, 2013)

Laravel 4 is the future of PHP, no question about it. FuelPHP was fun for a bit, mainly because it was just a group of friends bored of the CodeIgniter monotony and goofing off. CodeIgniter... 5-6 years of memories there that, without sounding too mushy, really laid the foundation of where I am today. I think CodeIgniter will always have a special place near and dear to my heart, to this day I have "Hand-selected as EllisLab's first CodeIgniter Community Chieftain" on my resume. It's a solid framework that does an excellent job of teaching you the basics and getting your productive and professional, but there comes a point as you start to approach innovative that it becomes very restrictive.

If you're using Composer, NodeJS, advanced JS frameworks beyond DOM manipulation (like Ember, Meteor, Angular), DevOps utilities and practices like Yeoman, GruntJS, Continuous Integration, Puppet, etc. - you're really only holding yourself back with CodeIgniter. Like @telephone, I usually lean on Slim in these instances.


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