PHP is a simple programming language specially designed for web development. It was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. PHP used to called as Personal Home Page, but now stands for the recursive initialism as “Hypertext Preprocessor i.e PHP”.
Following are the Top 5 Best and Easy PHP Frameworks every web developer should use in their next project, atleast once in their lifetime.
1. Laravel
Laravel was developed by Taylor Otwell, which is considered as a free, open-source web framework in PHP. He, then, introduced to the web applications with the help of MVC architectural pattern for development. Some of the advanced features of Laravel can be Template Engine, Artisan, Eloquent ORM, Libraries & Modular, MVC Architecture Support, Migration system for databases, Unit-Testing and yes, Security.
It helps to speed up database migration without data loss, and helps in creating web applications in a much easier way.
The source code of Laravel is available on GitHub which is licensed by MIT.
Laravel 5.8 was released in February 26, 2019 which is currently in use.
2. Codeigniter
CodeIgniter is an open-source rapid development software web framework, for building dynamic web sites using PHP.
It was originally developed by Rick Ellis (CEO of EllisLab, Inc.).
First version of CodeIgniter was released on February 28, 2006.
It uses the MVC system to simplify the coding and is helpful in any particular situation and is reusable. It acts as a helper in finding code errors and and fixing the web application issues.
It is user-friendly for developers for creating dynamic, secure and effective web applications in a very short period
CodeIgniter's source code is maintained at GitHub, which is certified open source software licensed with the MIT License.
CodeIgniter 3.1.10 was released in 16th January, 2019.
3. Symfony
Symfony is a web application framework in PHP, which is a set of reusable components as well as libraries. It was published as a free software on October 18, 2005 which is originally licensed with MIT.
Symfony helps in speeding up the development and maintenance of web applications and to replace repetitive coding tasks.
It involves the tools and a development methodology which helps to drive rapid development of applications, to get a finished, well-built application faster which saves your money.
Symfony 7.1.3 was released on November, 2018. The next version is yet to come in May, 2019.
4. CakePHP
CakePHP is an open-source web framework. It follows the MVC approach, modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails, and distributed Licensed by MIT.
SE concepts and software design patterns like MVC, active record and front contollers are been used by CakePHP
It helps you to create, manage, and publish content through CakePHP-based CMS.
CakePHP was started in April, 2005, when a Polish programmer Michal Tatarynowicz wrote a minimal version of a rapid application development in PHP, dubbing it as Cake. He published this framework under MIT license, and distributed it to the online community of developers. In December 2005, L. Masters and G. J. Woodworth found the Cake Software Foundation for promoting development related to CakePHP. The first version of CakePHP, CakePHP 1.0 was released on May, 2006 and CakePHP 3.7.3 was Released on 21st January, 2019 this year.
5. Yii framework
Yii is not only an open source and object-oriented web application framework, but also component-based MVC in PHP. Yii is pronounced as "Yee" or [ji:].
In Chinese, it illustrates "simple and evolutionary" and an acronym for "Yes It Is!”.
Yii is the fastest framework used for building large-scale web applications. It is suitable for building web applications as well as helping in creating social media sites, portals and forums which includes high traffic applications. Yii is considered as an expert and secure framework.
Yii was started as an attempt for fixing perceived drawbacks recurring on the PRADO framework because of slow handling of complex pages, steep learning curve and difficulty to customize many controls.
In October 2006, after ten months of development, the first version of Yii was released, followed by the formal 1.00 released in December 2008.
Yii 1.1 was released in January 2010, relational Active record queries, a unit testing framework and many more.
The Yii community continues to follow the 1.1 branch with the PHP 7 support with security fixes. The last release was version 1.1.20 in July 2018.
In May 2011, the developers decided to use new versions of PHP and fix all the architectural shortcomings, resulting in version 2.0.
In May 2013, the Yii 2.0 code was introduced public, followed by the first stable release in October 2014. PHP7 is supported since version 2.0.9.
The latest version 2.0.16 was released in January 2019.
Yii 2.0.17 was released in March 23, 2019 this year.