Best PHP Frameworks for 2019

As an entrepreneur, building a state-of-art website gives your business a face, a way to portray yourself before the world. Whether you want to build an ultra-modern website or an enterprise web portal, a right set of frameworks and tools is your foremost need.

PHP is the most popular and productive language which has helped a number of businesses around the globe to overcome the challenges. PHP not only smoothens the development process but also reduces the complete development cost, saves a lot of time, lets the development team re-use the code and helps them streamline the backend also.

In the age of intricate and stimulating websites, where people look for smart-tactics and not make the web solution from the scratch PHP frameworks ease the whole development process.

The software development tools keep updating themselves every now and then, and as newest frameworks are emerging very frequently, we have jotted down the best PHP Frameworks for 2019. Every framework has its own effects on the web application development process and each one fits the puzzle of different types of projects.

So, we put our heads to finding the 8 best PHP Frameworks, read the following snippets about each of them-

• Laravel

• Phalcon

• Symfony

• CodeIgniter

• Yii 2

• FuelPHP

• PHPixie

• CakePHP

Phalcon

Phalcon is a six-year-old PHP framework which is the among the front-runners to be the best framework to make a web solution. Being the fastest one among all the frameworks gives Phalcon an upper-hand, this MVC-based framework is made using programming languages C and C++ which let the development team to roll-out a high and efficient performance optimization. This framework makes use of a negligible amount of resources, unlike the other ones in the list, thereby processing the HTTP requests on the go, this is a critical feature for developers who work with gadgets with don’t have enough overhead.  Also with its newest and updated release supports PHP 7 too. This framework also gives the developers a set of data-storage tolls like PHQL(its own SQL dialect), Object Document Mapping for MongoDB. Form builders, Template engines, international language support, etc. are among the other important features of the framework.

A quick recap of some basic Important Features

• Low Overheads-The framework has both CPU and low-memory consumption in comparison to other options available.

• Router- Phalcon\Mvc\Router provides progressive routing facilities highly

• MVC And HMVC- This feature offers modules, views, components, models, and controllers which enhance the development process.

• Auto-loader- This features offers a complete auto-loading mechanism of all the PHP classes when followed by PSR-4.

• Rest- Phalcon makes full-stack or micro apps to assist in order to meet the goal.

• Dependency Injection- Not only this but Phalcon also gives location services. It is also a container for them itself.

Laravel

An open-source free framework Laravel was incepted in 2011 by Taylor Otwell. One of the most used PHP framework Laravel lets the developers develop web applications using the MVC(Model-view-controller) architectural pattern, and it is based on Symphony. As all the Laravel releases are extensively documented, it can be easily learned and also with every release developers can increase their knowledge base.

Laravel primarily focuses on rapid app development; the framework comes with an efficient templating engine which lets the software developers perform several common tasks on the go such as caching, authentication, user management, and even restful routing.

Enhancing the level of Laravel as the best PHP framework are features like refined syntax, which helps to improve the performance by letting to run tasks asynchronously in the background, and Laravel also lets you have a full-fledged integration with the Amazon Web services(AWS).

This rapid yet elegant framework has added the following recently-

• Laravel Dusk – This form of Laravel offers the development team user-friendly and highly interactive browser automation and testing API. It’s highly recommended a large number of developers fraternity.

• Laravel Horizon – Laravel Horizon provides an easy-to-use dashboard and a code-driven configuration which works great with Redis queues.

• Laravel Echo – This form of framework brought along the evolution of broadcasting events. This enables and enhanced the power of WebSockets for apps without any difficulty or complexity.

Symfony

One of the oldest PHP frameworks, Symfony, which was launched in 2005, this framework is improving and maturing with age with the trust and loyalty of a large chunk of developers. This extensive PHP framework is the only one in the long list of frameworks which completely follows the standards of a web as well as PHP. The components of Symfony are used by renowned content management systems(CMS) like OroCRM, Drupal and PHP Bulletin Board(PHPBB).

Developers love Symfony because it provides reusable components and libraries using which they can do a large number of tasks like templating, authentication, object configurations, etc. with ease.

Symfony is the perfect choice for large scale assignments; it comes with an in-built massive ecosystem which is supported by a large number of the active programming community.

Some of Symfony’s  important features are:

• It’s considered as a conventional foundation for some of the best PHP apps.

• It gives around 30 stand-alone components to its development for web app development.

• It smoothes and speeds up the creation and maintenance of PHP web applications.

• It puts an end to repetitive coding tasks.

Codeigniter

If you are looking for rapid app development framework Codeigniter is the ideal one. The framework gives very low-hassle, its lightweight framework which comes with a tiny a very small footprint which the developers can install just by directly uploading it to the hosting. Codeigniter needs no specific software installation or specific command line, just upload the complete files and get-set-go.

The frameworks’ large number of libraries and small learning curves make building complete web apps easy breezy. Codeigniter comes with highly extensive documentation and a very vast but helpful community. Backed by a dynamic academic entity(The British Columbia Institute of Technology) it keeps updating and growth with every passing day.

This framework comes with several in-built libraries for different things like form validation, unity testing, sessions, emails and loads more. Another amazing feature of Codeigniter is that if you are unable to find a library for your specific problem you can always build a library of your own and share it with the whole community.

A sum up of all its features:

• The small footprint is designed to give the developers an elegant yet simplistic tool kit.

• The framework has its own robust security system including in-built protection against attacks by CSRF, XSS and more.

• Codeigniter has extensive but easily understandable user guides, documentation, references, and tutorials.

• It comes with an impeccable performance ability and outperforms most of its competitors often.

Yii 2

As simple as its name Yii can be expanded as “Yes, it is!!” The newer version of the framework comes with an even more simpler and efficient loading technique which simply outperforms the other frameworks in the race. This PHP framework, which is object-oriented, believes in the principle which goes as “Don’t repeat yourself”, as it avoids the usage of the same software pattern again and again.

Yii comes with an Ajax and JQuery integration; the framework is the best choice when it comes to large scale enterprise web development solutions. Not just it but Yii2 has its own class code generator which sets in motion the object-oriented programming and enhances the level of prototyping also. This feature not only helps in providing a web-based interface but also let the programmer generate a customizable code interactively. Some other features of the above frameworks are little and enhanced development time, multiple package availability in case of security of code and apps and the framework provides a specific set of configuration in order to speed up the complete development process.

FuelPHP

FuelPHP was launched in the year 2014 to overcome the shortcomings of the available PHP frameworks. This set-up comes with the most effective and effective features of PHP web app development. The framework is full-stack, and it has complete support from MVC(Model View Controller) architecture and even its enhanced version i.e. HMVC(Hierarchical Model-View-Controller)

FuelPHP comes with a large bag full of features the major ones include extensibility and modularity. This PHP framework helps the developers face the security issues with the inbuilt of the set-up such URI class and input filtering and even the output encoding. FuelPHP comes with its own authentic framework. Let’s take note of other important features of the framework which go on as URL routing system, vulnerability protection, HMVC implementation, and caching system. This framework is perfect in order to deliver end-to-end web applications of any size and with any number of complexities.

PHPixie

One of the newest members of the PHP framework community PHPixie is one of the most lightweight among all the other mentioned choices, easy to use and start with the framework is highly modularized.

PHPixie consists of a lot of modules and compiles really fast. The framework is a blend of several great tools which can be used for various purposes like security and cryptography, supporting MongoDB, and also in order to shared code with the composer, all just right outside-the-box.

Launched in 2012, PHPixie uses an HMVC(Hierarchical Model View Controller) pattern which is very similar to FuelPHP. This framework has independent components which can be used separately. These components are completely tested and require a  very negligible number of dependencies.

PHPixie has its fair share of downsides too like its less number of modules and lesser use and popularity when compared to other PHP frameworks.

CakePHP

CakePHP has been a favorite of all and has topped the charts of the best PHP frameworks for several years now. Since its inception in the early 2000s, the framework has been improving at every stage and still remains and gets consistent applause by the community.

CakePHP allows proper class validation and fast builds; the framework was used to make the most beautiful, user-friendly and feature-rich websites in the past years. Build on the CURD framework i.e. Create, read, update and delete, The framework comes with an efficient and strong security system, with cross-site request forgery, SQL injection, cross-site scripting protection, and input validation too. The CakePHP framework community is a highly sophisticated one, which offers free support portals and a premiums support service.

Additional features of the framework include:

• CakePHP does not need any configuration or complex YAML or XML files.

• The framework everything in-built that’s needed i.e. database access, caching, authentication, translations, and validations.

• It also has a bunch of conventions which are designed to guide when you develop your application.

• CakePHP lets you use code generation and the support features which let the developers build prototypes very easily and rapidly.

All the PHP frameworks are woven into reality in order to simplify the development process and thereby reduce the work-time required to make feature-rich web solutions. Every framework in the above list has its own set of features and cons, we have tried to bring out the complete information of all the major frameworks.

We hope that this extensive list of the Top PHP Frameworks for 2019 will help you narrow down your search for your next web solution.