Developing software applications could be complex, time-consuming and a real pain if you don’t come up with the right framework. A well-chosen framework helps you to do things faster (for example, by reusing generic components and modules), and operates well on without creating much problems. Using an efficient framework not only makes your website scalable but also helps you in the long-term maintenance as it complies with the business standards , keeps your code organized and allows your application to evolve and grow over time.

If we talk from the developer’s point of view, the most important things are time and efforts in order to complete an application. If you can easily get through these steps, you can focus more on other specific features like functionality and sustainability of the application.

Laravel

Laravel is a PHP web application development framework having expressive and elegant syntax which makes the overall development simple by easing common tasks such as authentication, sessions, routing and caching. It has got a bunch of powerful accessible tools efficient enough to handle large and robust applications as it provides you an inversion control container, expressive migration system, and tightly integrated unit testing support. Laravel can be used for huge enterprise level applications, or simple JSON APIs, meaning it’s perfectly suited to all types and sizes of projects. It’s built in top of several Symfony components, providing a concrete foundation of well-tested, reliable, error free code. With Composer it provides, you can manage all your application’s third-party packages, and works great on MySQL, Postgres, SQLServer and SQLite.

CodeIgnitor

Here comes another powerful PHP framework with a small footprint, specially designed for those who require a simple, yet elegant toolkit to build fully-featured web applications. The best part ofCodeIgniter is that it doesn’t require any, or nearly zero configuration, with no restrictive coding rules, and offers simple solutions to complex application requirements. In addition to this, Codeigniter is powered with rich set of libraries for commonly needed tasks, as well as a simple interface and logical structure to access these libraries. One more thing that lures PHP developers is its speed. CodeIgniter is really fast because its core system operates on a few small libraries. The additional libraries can be loaded dynamically upon requests, based on your specific needs for a given process, which means the base system is both lean and agile.

CodeIgniter also supports MVC controller which allows it for great separation between logic and presentation, particularly useful for projects in which designers are working on template files.

CakePHP

CakePHP is another powerful PHP framework that allows you to develop web applications faster by using code generation features to rapidly build prototypes. The configuration is simple. All you have to do is to setup your database. Things like translations, database access, caching, validation, authentication and more are all built into the framework itself. It also comes along with clean MVC conventions which helps you with the entire development process. One of the biggest reasons why PHP developers opt for CakePHP is that it can handle every aspect of your application development process, right from the user’s initial request to the final rendering of a web page.

Yii

Yii is a fast, elegant and high-performance PHP framework with a powerful caching support and is explicitly designed to work efficiently with AJAX. Now keep on counting the additional features you get with Yii:

• Auto code generation
• JQuery Integration
• Form handling
• HTML Grid component
• Database relations

When it comes to security, Yii is considered to be one of the most secure PHP web development frameworks. It includes input validation, output filtering, SQL injection and Cross-site scripting prevention. Again, Yii follows the MVC pattern helping you to develop clean and reliable codes which, in turn, ensures separation of logic and presentation.

Symfony

Symfony is a mainly known for its speed with which it creates and maintains your web application. It provides you a set of prefabricated components that can be rapidly integrated into your application, combined with a clear methodology to help you work efficiently and effectively on the most complex tasks. Symfony promises you stability and maintainability as well as you can easily upgrade your applications.