Taking a look at ten different PHP frameworks

Introduction

PHP frameworks are the latest hot topic in the PHP community, and new frameworks are being released daily. With over 40 frameworks available it's difficult to decide which framework works best for you, especially as each framework offers different functionality.

In this article we will look at ten popular frameworks, and compare them to each other. First I will give you a general chart which gives you a quick overview of all the frameworks, and after that we'll go through each framework and discuss it in short.

A Quick Overview

Below you can view a chart of the ten frameworks, and what functionality each frameworks offers.

Framework	PHP4	PHP5	MVC1	Multiple DB's2	ORM3	DB Objects4	Templates5	Caching6	Validation7	Ajax8	Auth Module9	Modules10
Zend Framework	-				-		-			-	-
CakePHP							-					-
Symfony Project	-						-					-
Seagull Framework										-
WACT					-			-		-	-	-
Prado	-		-		-	-
PHP on TRAX	-						-	-			-	-
ZooP Framework					-
eZ Components	-		-		-					-	-
CodeIgniter					-					-	-
#1: Indicates whether the framework comes with inbuilt support for a Model-View-Controller setup. #2: Indicates whether the framework supports multiple databases without having to change anything. #3: Indicates whether the framework supports an object-record mapper, usually an implementation of ActiveRecord. #4: Indicates whether the framework includes other database objects, like a TableGateWay. #5: Indicates whether the framework has an inbuilt template engine. #6: Indicates whether the framework includes a caching object or some way other way of caching. #7: Indicates whether the framework has an inbuilt validation or filtering component. #8: Indicates whether the framework comes with inbuilt support for Ajax. #9: Indicates whether the framework has an inbuilt module for handling user authentication. #10: Indicates whether the framework has other modules, like an RSS feed parser, PDF module or anything else (useful).

Click here to open the chart in a new window

If anything in the above chart is incorrect, please let me know so I can correct it.