I am currently working on converting a ColdFusion website, using Fusebox framework, to PHP. The site contains like 20,000 lines of ColdFusion code. My dilemma is, should I switch to Fusebox-PHP (as it will be easier to migrate the project layout) or a robust and popular framework like Symfony or Zend.
Can anyone suggest a few points in favor or against the three options?
migrate to Fusebox-PHP
migrate to Zend
migrate to Symfony
Fusebox has been abandoned for a variety of issues (legal issues amongst them iirc). As long as you are rewriting it into PHP you might as well switch to a more current framework. Sure, you will have to learn how to do the same things a new way, but on the bright side you will have gained experience with a popular framework!
Ultimately Fusebox is dead and it would be unwise to use it (unless you were doing something turn-key like just migrating to Railo)
My opinion is that Fusebox is an old framework that is not only not that popular with ColdFusion any more, but never really took off in the PHP world.
I would either find a new framework or do without the framework depending on the complexity of the site, there are many good PHP frameworks out there.
Looks like the last release for PHP was 7 years ago in 2005
Related
So I'm about to start a big Property Management System for the cloud. This Hotel system already exists in VB.net technologies, and now we are porting the whole system to web.
We are trying to decide between ASP.net or PHP, we are thinking on PHP because ASP.net would cost too much on licensing and servers. So there is Laravel, Symphony, CodeIgniter, Zend, etc..
The thing is, this project is suppose to live for years to come. But we feel like getting constraint ed by using a PHP framework, because every time the framework gets updated then we need to update our whole system. For example.. now Laravel got updated from version 4 to 5. And the whole folder structure changed. I can't imagine having our big system needing to be updated and keep up to every Laravel version update. How do you keep up with this ?
Also, what would happened if Laravel disappears, its the trendy fashion now. But we see PHP frameworks come and go.
Would it be wiser not to use any php framework and building everything from scratch to have more control over it ?
You should first note that using a framework is primarily meant to solve two issues;
Force coding into a certain 'format'. Collaboratively working on code can generate 'hacked' solutions, or unmaintainable code. A framework can be the force which helps keep these things in check.
A framework comes with a certain core-code which handles for example database abstraction, routing, etc. which can save you a lot of time to develop yourself.
An extra thing to mention; when implementing new features, there is the possibility someone has built it before and maybe even better than you would have anticipated.
Keeping up with the framework should not be too hard, as long as you abide by the coding guidelines of the framework. With the bigger frameworks, new releases have (or after sometime generate) tutorials on how to port your previous version into the new version format.
Choosing which framework to use, is a question which is opinion-based and not suited to discuss here, but keep in mind that you choose your framework according to your needs. Also check how big the community is and how much 3rd party plugins/code exists (the more, the longer the framework will last).
Good luck!
You could see a framework as a base to start from. Remember that you get all the code! Look at the code. Do you like it? Does it fit your requirements? Using a framework gives you a huge advantage over making everything yourself from scratch.
But do you need to update? Would you update your own code constantly? Perhaps it's not always needed. Sure, if there is a security issue you should do something about it, but seeing every update to a framework as essential is just plain nonsense.
I build projects aimed at specific versions of frameworks and libraries. I try to build in flexibility so I can swap out frameworks and libraries, and versions, but I often find that I stick with what's working.
Some people might not like this, and argue you should always be on the latest version, but I find that completely impractical.
What is most similar PHP framework to Pylons?
I mean mostly ideology of programming.
Being primarily a Python developer, and having used Pylons, TurboGears, and Django, I would whole heartedly, 100% recommend Kohana 3.x. To be completely honest I am not a huge fan of PHP, even though it is the language of choice at my current employer. Given the choice I would use Python and Pylons. But, using Kohana is just about the best framework I could hope for from PHP. I hope I am not biases, considering I work with two developers on the Kohana development team. ;-)
PHP and Python are very different. As such, there is no real equivalent of Pylons in PHP. But, I would also say there is no real equivalent of Kohana in Python
Methyl, Great php framework is Codeigniter, fully documented. Also there is Kohana, if you want php5 features.
Regarding your question, Since benchmarking PHP vs Pylons they are comparing smarty with pylons, it might be similar.
I would go for Codeigniter or Kohana. Behance.net is one of the sites build on Codeigniter.
I used Pylons a few years ago. I don't think that there is any web framework in PHP very similar to it.
However, I find that Symfony encourages several web development patterns used in Pylons. For example, in ORM, templating, testing, configuration files, MVC, etc. Some other MVC frameworks that can be compared to Pylons are CakePHP (which is inspired in Ruby on Rails) and the Zend Framework (one of the largest, with lots of components to be extended).
I already have v1 of my webapp written in Codeigniter/PHP.
I'm now working on v2, which will have some significant changes to all MVC components.
I'm pretty comfortable with CI and I like it. Very intuitive for a C coder like me.
But I am wondering if it is worth it to rewrite the app in Rails?
Will the productivity gains be worth the cost of learning another framework from scratch?
I want to be practical and not chase something just because it's cooler or more fun.
Here are some productivity criteria:
HTML and CSS generation is fairly labor intensive. Does Rails have anything distinctive to help with this?
I'd like to reuse other people's code for commonly implemented functionality (e.g. interfacing with FB, Twitter, and other social sites). How much more 3rd party code reuse would I get with Rails?
How much more benefit would I get from the Rails community vs. CI community?
Make automated testing easier. I test manually today, which is labor-intensive.
I'd appreciate specific benefits vs. idealistic/religious arguments.
Thanks!
Codeigniter is obviously a framework built on PHP. While there are fundamental differences between PHP and Ruby, all of your criteria can be met with either of the two languages. Migrating to Ruby would seem to be a waste of time considering your requirements. There are plenty of ways to automate HTML/CSS in PHP and there are numerous open source Facebook/Twitter integrations (just check FB and Twitter developer sections). There are also plenty of open source PHP testing options available. Google is your friend! IMO it would be a big waste of time to rewrite your entire application for the sake of your criteria when there are plenty of PHP solutions to your problem.
I think the better comparison here would be CI to Symfony. Symfony 1.4 is a PHP framework pretty much on par with Rails functionality - as far as I can tell through my research, anyway (I'm not a Ruby programmer).
If you were to switch to to Symfony, you would gain a lot of productivity tools. Symfony 1.4 + Doctrine has the ability to generate a lot of your code/interface for you. Symfony/Doctrine likes to keep you away from repetitive tasks such as building models and data validation.
If you want to do your research ahead of time, I suggest reading through Symfony's free e-book Piratical Symfony to give you an idea of how things work in Symfony.
Now, with all that said I feel obliged to mention that the Symfony team is working on Symfony 2.0 which will not be backwards compatible with Symfony 1.4. The expected release date is March of 2011. I expect that maintenance on Symfony 1.4 will continue in the future.
-- Edit --
I also think that sticking with your native language would allow you to develop with the least amount of overhead. Changing to a new language means having to learn it's up's and downs in order to be truly productive.
IE to be at a point where you're not coming back in 6 months to fix a bug that an experienced Ruby developer would have known to avoid.
To me, this is more a question of how big your current web app is. If it took you a couple of weekends and you do not have a tight deadline, I would switch to Ruby/Rails.
However, if it's significantly large and you actually want to come up with R2 in a timely fashion, I would suggest sticking with PHP.
As to your specific questions, I'm not too familiar with PHP, but I don't think Rails will give you a whole lot more in the HTML/CSS department. Not sure about the next two bullet points. Ruby does have much better automated testing tools, with new stuff coming out all the time.
Here are a couple links about Derek Sivers, who switched from PHP to Rails to PHP and now likes Rails again. It might help your thinking.
http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html
http://railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book#foreword
i am looking for a new php(5) framework it must be lightweight(x<500kb), oop, have orm, active record built in, simple to learn, fast to use, active community and dev.
I need it for small, personal app development.
My php skills are quite low and i have .net background. I have previously used LightVc+cough and codeIgnitor php frameworks.
There are so-many frameworks there and it is quite hard to find the best.
I have checked the other threads here but they are to old to consider sustainable.
Thanks for your time.
I think you dig out the http://www.phpframeworks.com/. It has details about each and every accepted framework.
Code Igniter is very popular and also supports PHP4: http://codeigniter.com/
Unlike .NET and miscellaneous other programming languages, you really don't need a framework to write a PHP application. In fact, I'd advise against it. Learn the language, not a framework.
For someone with low PHP skills I'd say codeigniter although it doesn't have ORM built-in (it has a sort of lightweight active record class), but there are tutorials on how to use Doctrine (a good PHP ORM solution) with it.
However if you want a PHP5 only framework (as in written to take full advantage of PHP5) then I'd suggest looking at Kohana (a PHP5 only fork of codeigniter), Yii or Zend framework.
I have been dabbling in programming/scripting languages since I was a kid. I started off with HTML and CSS, then went on to PHP (which I got quite good at) and then to Python, Perl, and C(++). I've recently done a lot of work in PHP (along with MySQL).
After spending so much time learning these languages, I now want to do something with them. I'm looking at starting/contributing to an open source project; almost certainly a web application of some sort.
In my experience with writing (admittedly small) web applications, I've found writing "pure" PHP to be an extremely slow and tedious process.
My question is this: if I were to be writing a relatively complex/large web application from scratch, what should I write it in? Should I use pure PHP/MySQL, or use a framework like Django, Rails, or CakePHP?
Writing a complex application from scratch, I would definitly not use "bare PHP" : I would certainly use a framework : they provide :
a large number of useful classes/methods
some set of rules -- like "in which directory should controllers be saved", "how to write a view", ...
MVC -- i.e. they help with better structuration of the project
Note that this answer is valid for both personnal projects, and professionnal projects.
There are several great Frameworks in PHP, like :
Zend Framework
Symfony
CakePHP
Code Igniter
Kohana
One thing to remember : learning how to use a framework well will take some time : starting with a small project, before going for a big one, would probably be a good idea ;-)
Now, when you're asking yourself the question of "which framework should I choose", it's mostly a matter of personnal preferences... And here are a couple of questions/answers that might help a bit :
PHP Framework Decision - Analysis paralysis!
To use a PHP framework or not?
PHP - MVC framework?
Which PHP Framework is right for this project?
Best PHP framework for an experienced PHP developer?
As you're asking me which Framework I would choose ; well :
I really like Zend Framework, and often use Doctrine as ORM (it's the default ORM of Symfony, but can be used very easily with ZF)
If I had to choose another one, I would probably go with Symfony, as I've seen it used on a couple of projects at work, and know many people who work with it and like it
If you already know that language, you should most definitely use a framework (unless you're a masochist).
For me, besides that fact that they're usually bundled with all sorts of great libraries, using a framework is all about using time effectively.
Most importantly, it will save you time. You're freed from the nitty-gritty of worrying about the foundation/architecture and are able to spend your time of the features of the application itself.
Also, it will save others time; especially since you plan on being all open sourcey.
depending of your skills level, yes you can do it in pure PHP without frameworks. This also will be good, IMO, to improve your skills at debugging, logics, and others. But, on the other hand, you will restrict to other programmers to improve/maintain your code due to learning curve, in this case, the framework serves as a commom language. I recommend that if your project will be complex, or with the possiblity to other programmers join in the project, that you choose a framework which you feels comfortable and use it.
Depends on who will be working with the code, on which plattform it has to run and how complex the database should be.
If you develop for a company or community it is always easiest to use PHP because there are many others who know it so i.e. for companies it's easier to recruit someone who knows the language.
If you mostly want to develop on your own, use what you like most, i even heard of websites written in pure common lisp.
If the application can run on windows only C# is also a good solution as you can develop web applications extremely fast and the .NET library makes many tasks easy.
As database backend you can use MySQL if the structure is simple but for more complex databases i'd use postgres as the MySQL performance seems to drop fast with increasing complexity (subjective opinion).
EDIT:
As others noted, Frameworks are always a good idea. There are web frameworks for most of the current languages. For PHP CakePHP was recently recommended to me.