I have been using qcodo/qcubed for developing CMS based sites. I had been successful in developing and maintaining fairly complex sites using these frameworks.
Things get done so quick and easy using qcubed that i never felt the need to look for another framework like zend, symfony ....
I am wondering if you guys have tried or have been using them.
I have not tried zend, symfony, kohana or other frameworks of discusson on reddit.
What is your opinion, is qcubed as good as these frameworks? If not can you please suggest some of the features that you find useful in other frameworks and are missing from qcubed.
thanks
I've heard good things about qcodo. I took a quick look at the code and I find it somewhat bloated, however that doesn't mean it's a bad framework.
CakePHP is also bloated, I don't have any experience with it but I don't find it sexy enough. Lithium on the other hand seems like another story.
Zend Framework, while huge, has an impressible amount of libraries that can be used in standalone.
Regarding CodeIgniter and it's fork Kohana, both are extremely fast and lightweight - they provide a small learning curve that allows developers to get things done quickly.
One other framework that is probably less known is Akelos, I've never used it but it seems a pleasure to work with after watching the screencasts. It's also extremely powerful.
why don't you try for Cake PHP? because most of the features of MVC has been perfectly covered in Cake.
this is just my suggestion...
Related
I need to re-architect a PHP application that is entirely procedural. Pretty much every WTF-ism you can ever think of is in this which means that it's likely to be more of a rewrite than anything else.
I want to stagger this and would like to do it with MVC.
Can anyone recommend a PHP framework that is going to help me?
The current database (MySQL) is OK - but the code isn't.
Some updates:
* I consider myself to be very skilled in web programming but I do very little in PHP
* A lot of experience in MVC
* No issues with Design Patterns
* The project is an ecommerce platform
* I am coming from a mainly .NET background
You should take a look at CodeIgniter. It's fast, stable and easy to learn.
I use Codeigniter pretty much all time. It's quite easy to use and it has a light footstep (it loads only classes you use).
CakePHP 2.0 beta has pretty much everything you'd want in a framework. It's fast and it's really good once you've picked it up.
If you have previous experience in Ruby on Rails => Yii
Else if you have previous experience in Django/Spring => Symfony2
Else if you have no experience in any framework & fast way learnig => CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter is probably the simplest answer. It's easy to learn and well documented. However, I prefer Zend Framework because of the templating system, the extensive library, and the new ZF tool. However I found the learning curve on ZF to be a tad steep. I recommend getting a CURRENT book to learn ZF. "Easy PHP Web Sites with Zend Framework" is very good.
http://www.wjgilmore.com/books/read/easy_php_websites_with_the_zend_framework
if you want other decision it's symfony(herder) or Yii(very easy to learn).
Simple project are creating by using(CI), if you project is harder use symphony or Yii.
If you want became ninja FrameworkDev learn Zend
I'm building this web site for my friend's startup. The site when its complete should be able to handle 10,000 users at a time and should have great security.
I've been developing the site individually till now and everything seems to be pretty feasible, but some of my developer friends suggest that i move to a framework.
What are the pros and cons of moving to a framework?
Also i have developed a pretty big part of the website till now, so can i just move it into a framework environment. I've never worked on any kind of framework before.
Cons of going to a framework:
a learning curve
you may have to approach things differently then you would normally
performance overhead (probably slight)
Pros (of a GOOD framework):
much of the mundane coding is already done
helps you write clear, compartmentalized code
libraries included to help you with security, database communication, etc
easier for other developers to jump into the project
bug fixes from the framework's community
The number one benefit of moving to a framework is that the people who developed the framework already solved (most of) the problems you would face if you would do everything yourself. I think this argument should be enough to answer your question.
If you need help in choosing a framework, stackoverflow has lots of already answered questions in this area. You should take a look at some of the opinions already posted and decide what you need.
Why do you want to invent the wheel over and over again? Building your own system is, in my opinion, only usefull if you want to learn how to build such a system and get familiair with the basics of a CMS. The problem with it is that you have to do all the debugging yourself which will take ages. With a framework, other people already did that work for you, so you can make progress much faster.
There is no thing like a best framework. I have worked with Zend Framework and Kohana 3. Both are really nice frameworks but if it was up to me I would take Kohana. Remember there are many more frameworks and this is not a complete comparison. Just give it a google and choose the one you feel most comfortable with.
Good luck!
I would suggest the Zend Framework as per your requirement.Just look at site view futures,but it some what difficult to learn in start.But if you want customization then Core php is the best.For security you have to know the things some better way like sql injection & design the architecture according to it.For faster development you can also move to ROR.
Have Dream Day
Further to my comments, I find working with other peoples frameworks rather a procrustean endeavour. Because I wrote it, I know my framework inside out and can rattle code off very quickly whereas when I am coding for a popular framework like CodeIgniter, Zend or Symfony it takes me that little bit longer to remember how I'm supposed to do something in the way they want me to.
Of course, a lot of the hurdles, common tasks and security issues will have been encountered and solved for you if you use a framework. However, if you've already written a large part of the website code then refactoring it to leverage a framework could be quite a substantial undertaking unless you've been quite clever with your initial architecture and have things loosely coupled.
I'm about to develop a web app (PHP/MySQL). I prefer to use the MVC style when developing apps, but I've always struggled writing my own MVC framework in the past so I've started playing with CodeIgniter. After a couple of tutorials I better understand how to properly develop with a MVC framework and I'm totally comfortable using CodeIgniter to write my app.
The thing is I'm now wondering if its better to write my own MVC framework for this app or use CodeIgniter? My worries are due to the fact that I'm just getting this app written to serve as a prototype and will hand it off to more experienced developers down the road. I'm worried CodeIgniter has limitations that I'm unaware of yet and could hinder further development for me or the next developer(s). I'd imagine its easier to get around issues/limitations of a custom framework than it is of a 3rd party/ready made/stock framework.
Any insight?
There aren't any real limitations to CodeIgniter as most of the core can be extended. I have been using it for years and not found anything I couldn't use it for.
Kohana is a little more fun if you're into PHP5/OOP stuff but the lack of documentation will make learning it quickly rather difficult, especially if you are being paid to produce this.
Use CI, it will speed you up plenty.
I'd would go with CodeIgniter if you're familiar with it (and not writing your own framework from scratch), the app is a prototype, and it's getting handed off to more experienced developers down the line.
CodeIgniter isn't an obscure framework, it's pretty widely used and well documented. If your developers kick up a fuss, then they're probably aren't as experienced as they would like to think they are.
For a prototype I would say definitely use whatever you're familiar with, instead of making the project much bigger than it needs to be. Writing your own framework is a huge challenge, but it's also a really good learning experience. I've written my own suited to my own needs just so that I could learn the language "in the deep end" (and I keep adding to it whenever I use it... maybe someday, when I decide it's "fully featured", I'll release it into the wider world). But you should only do that if you've got the time, and plenty of room for everything to go wrong.
Well, the question is: can you do better than every other MVC PHP framework out there? Reinventing the wheel only costs more time and the focus off your application changes, because you have 2 seperate things to maintain.
I would stick with a proper MVC framework. We use Symfony exclusively for that use. It's a great framework with a lot of features borrowed from other frameworks and other programming languages. However, the list is endlessly for PHP framework. I recommend reading a bit about other frameworks and pick the one which is the most suitable for your needs. It saves you time in the end.
As a developer, I had to go through the same road.
Personally, I chose CodeIgniter as primary tool of my development, mainly because of community support and straightforward MVC. However, CodeIgniter was built by EllisLab, and they are not community driven. If you are looking for something that has more dynamic, community driven, open source MVC framework, I would suggest using Kohana.
Kohana has a good community, and they have some notable contributors. Check it out here
If you are thinking of choosing from different types of frameworks, I would suggest make a list of things you want out of a framework, and do your search based on that.
I'm building a site like SO using PHP as a personal project. I started out with writing flat PHP files (the kind with SQL queries mixed in with HTML). After doing a few pages I noticed that it was getting hard to maintain. So I started using an ORM (Propel). Then I got introduced to Symfony.
I started refactoring my code to fit in with Symfony's MVC pattern. To me, it seems that for a small project such as this Symfony actually makes things more complicated and I actually develop slower. Are frameworks more geared towards large applications designed by multiple teams? Or am I doing something wrong?
Any framework or new technology will have a learning curve during which you will seem to go slower. If you follow the MVC pattern and best practices for your framework, you will generally end up with cleaner, more maintainable code. There is some overhead to MVC and to getting things structured well. This overhead will payoff more for larger projects, projects that last longer (lifespan of the site as well as development time), and for projects with more developers. For small sites that will not be maintained, the overhead can be too large to be worthwhile.
If you're going to write PHP professionally, or you intend to write seriously, your time is well spent learning a popular framework or two.
Also, in no way is "a site like SO" a "small project."
It depends upon the framework and how much you wish to trade off ease of development in the future with speed of development in the present. The best way to get to the bottom of it is to try out a few frameworks and see what suits you best. A few random examples include:
Agavi
Kohana
Zend Framework
CakePHP
I have used all of the above and I personally found Agavi to be the best, although certainly not the quickest to work with. I was not so impressed with Cake as the rest, but again this is personal preference.
I don't know how "small" your project really is, but even though it takes time to learn a framework and design your project so that it follows the framework's philosophy it's usually worth it.
In my experience, when projects start to grow like your project apparently does (naïve PHP → factoring out the model → ...) you end up, in the best case, with code very similar to a simple framework. When you are using a framework on the other hand, the basic design of your project is usually really well thought-out, so even if you are not an experienced software architect (maybe you are?) you will get a good foundation for your project.
Also, you say that it is a personal project so I guess it's some kind of hobby or educational thing. Using a framework can be a nice way to learn about design patterns and best practices in web development.
Perhaps Symfony is not the best choice for you. I guess it's a matter of personal opinion in the end. Personally I like CakePHP when coding PHP and Django when coding in Python.
I am going to be builiding a site like ebay - with all the features of ebay. Please note my payment method is limited to paypal.
What would be the best PHP framework
to use to build this quickly,
efficiently and with the smallest
learning curve?
I have narrowed down to CodeIgniter as the major contender for this project - but having looked through the docs I couldn't find a library or class that I can use with paypal - is the same for all frameworks- surley not?
Zend framework - I considered this but although its documentation is very good, hardly any video tutorials - other frameworks seem to have lots of these especially with normal developers creating screencasts - where is the Zend community!
CakePHP - Having read the stackoverflow threads, I gathered this is a slow framework, giving developers little control as it seems to be a CMS backbone rather than a framework - agree? It was also said cakePHP and Zend have a steeper learning curve than CodeIgnitor.
I have start my short-listing again and I would appreciate any help with this.
Thanks all
You'll very likely find CodeIgniter to have the lowest learning curve. Regardless of the framework you choose, you'll have to pick up where the framework leaves off, and that is going to mean a significant amount of work on your part (if you truly want to implement all the features of ebay). There seems to be a PayPal lib in the CodeIgniter Wiki. Looks like it would be a great place to start.
Cake is not a CMS backbone, it's a framework like the others. It's just more opinionated, i.e. geared towards CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete, what you typically do in a CMS). If your application is focused on CRUD, Cake will give your development a kickstart; you can get a complete admin interface for your database tables up in, literally, minutes.
Thanks to that it may be a little slower, especially compared to "loose" frameworks like Zend, but in the end it won't matter much. You can do anything with any of these frameworks and any of these frameworks can be optimized to run as fast as possible. Try to get a simple prototype app up and running in all of them and choose the one that seems most comfortable to you.
I'd really recommend Codeigniter for speed. I've made a few things with it and it was great.
If you need some help learning Codeigniter Nettuts has been doing some really good screencasts
In the end, it won't matter. Your code for database and presentation will trump any 'problems' your framework has. The frameworks you listed are awefully similar. You'll be more or less stuck with which you pick, so pick one and learn all you can.
If you're going with codeigniter (note, maybe take a look at Kohana too, the php5 fork of CI), you can always use libs out of Zend if theres something that fits your needs.