• Links - PHP MVC Frameworks

Oct 8 2009: Are MVC frameworks worth the performance hit and hassle ? See Damn Small PHP Frameworks. Because size does matter. Make sure to read comments too.

Feb 10 2009: added PHPulse

Good list of PHP frameworks. Are they all MVC ?

Everyone has their favorite MVC framework, but my favorites are CakePHP and CodeIgniter. CakePHP is larger and has a fuller feature set - CodeIngiter has all the basic features and a smaller footprint. Otherwise, they are very similar, even in some details.

I haven't had time to do a full evaluation, but PHPulse claims to be the fastest MVC framework ( one of the fastest ? ) and deserves consideration for that reason alone. The community is small and largely inactive, but the developer has maintained a good pace of new releases and improved the documentation. Note that installation assumes Linux; Subversion is also recommended. Worth a look.

Metaframeworks ?

Manuel Lemos has done a good analysis of PHP frameworks. He has his own PHP libraries for a "meta-language" called MetaL, described as "generating source code in a target language from a program specification in a higher level language". He says he doesn't use MVC frameworks for various reasons, that he is more interested in "libraries of components and tools".

He has developed a technique of Use Case Mapping that puts a particular MVC structure into a high-level conceptual context, similar to the idea fo the Workflow Template I developed in the old tutorial stuff. also related to my description of the Extended Zachman framework. It's really the equivalent of MVC raised to a higher level, sort meta-MVC, if you will. Why he doesn't think that qualifies as a conceptual framework, I don't know. A good thoughtful read.