dev|sushi

I’m in the market for a PHP framework to use for my future projects. Compiling a list is fairly simple using Google, there are quite a few blogs that mention which are best overall or best for certain applications, for example, this one and this one. With all the talk about Ruby on Rails lately I was curious about it but for the most part I don’t see the point in learning a new programming language just to use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture and scaffolding. There are quite a few PHP frameworks that use the same concepts (including one that is being directly copied from Rails). My goal is to find the best for my needs.

• Over the next few weeks (maybe months) I will be testing various frameworks in a VM on my machine to see which are best for web applications. I expect to find a few different ones that will meet my needs in different ways but it should be interesting. My criteria are pretty loose I am big on the “feel” of a tool which is hard to quantify.
• It needs to be able to work well with JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest (AJAX)
• MySQL and other databases at a higher level than PHP does natively
  (connection pooling, caching, etc.)
• Easily allow for the heavy use of standards such as CSS, XHTML, microformats, etc.
• Actively maintained and improved
• Simple but flexible syntax/structure
• Able to be installed on a web hosting service

Over the next few years I expect to start doing business on the internet by offering services from standard application development, to web application development (my main focus), to web site design and hosting. Finding the right tool for the job now will make this process seamless and allow me to build up a toolkit for the future. By the way, if you have need for any of the services I mentioned just drop me an email. I am not taking on any large projects within the next year just simple sites and small applications.

The first framework I am going to check out is symfony which has been reviewed by many to be the best available currently. After that I am going to try CakePHP which is also well reviewed. It is used by Jonathon Snook of snook.ca whose blog I link in my “Worthy Blogs” section. If you have a favorite let me know in the comments.