cakebaker » symfony

Comparison of three PHP frameworks

cakebaker — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:33:01 +0000

On IBM’s developerWorks a new series called “PHP frameworks” has been started which compares the three frameworks Zend, symfony, and CakePHP, by means of creating the same sample application with each framework. The series consists of five parts:

Part 1 of this series lays out the scope for the series, introduces the frameworks being examined, covers their installation, and scopes out the first test application you will build.

Part 2 walks you through building the sample application in each of the three frameworks, highlighting their similarities and differences.

Part 3 starts with extending the test application, then deals with exceptions to the rule. All frameworks work well when doing the tasks for which they were designed. Needing to do something the framework wasn’t built to do happens on every project. This article looks at such instances.

Part 4 focuses primarily on Ajax support. The use of Ajax, using native code and third-party libraries, is examined — specifically, how each framework behaves and accepts specific popular libraries.

Part 5 deals with working outside the frameworks. A single task is identified (nightly update script), and the process for accomplishing this task is examined in each framework.

[via guymon]

A comparison of Rails-inspired PHP frameworks

cakebaker — Thu, 04 May 2006 08:07:34 +0000

Fabio Cevasco (aka h3rald) has written an interesting article in which he compares different Rails-inspired PHP frameworks. The frameworks he compares are: CakePHP, Symfony, PHP on Trax, Code Igniter, Biscuit, and Pipeline. Of course, such comparisons are always subjective, but if you are evaluating such frameworks, the article could be a good starting point.

A failed symfony

cakebaker — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 09:53:20 +0000

This weekend I wanted to try the symfony project. They offer a “My first symfony project” tutorial together with a special download (symfony sandbox), which should contain all required libraries. Well, that is not completely true, as Pear must be installed. After installing Pear I was able to request the “congratulations page” and to do the scaffolding part of the tutorial. But the framework was slow, really slow (it took around 5-6 seconds to display these simple pages). Although they write in the readme file that the dev environment is slower than the default environment, it is a little bit too slow for me ;-)

Anyway, there was no forthcoming for me due to problems with accessing the database. Symfony could not open the SQLite database. So I tried to switch to MySQL, and changed the database configuration in config/databases.yml. But for some reason symfony still generated code for SQLite. And so I gave up ;-)

Even though I will give it another try with the default installation.

What could be the killer application for CakePHP?

cakebaker — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:27:45 +0000

Three days ago, sosa wrote a comment to an older post which inspired me to think. But first sosa’s comment:

I think is all a matter of marketing, CakePHP is the best framework but it’s marketing hasn’t been the best.

* It needs some killer app
* It needs some killer tutorials
* Screencasts would be cool

I agree with that comment. Let us compare CakePHP with two of its “competitors”: symfony and Ruby on Rails (RoR). Both frameworks have one or more killer applications: symfony has askeet and RoR, well, they have several applications. And CakePHP? Hm, there is no such killer application in sight… (maybe someone is developing it in stealth mode, who knows?). symfony has found a nice way to create their killer application, they developed askeet in 24 steps within the scope of an advent calendar. Each step has been created as a tutorial, so they kill two birds with one stone: they have a killer application and a series of tutorials. Genial! What do you think could be the killer application for CakePHP? Or do you have an idea how to create one?

The next point are the killer tutorials, or, more general, the documentation. The good thing is: all three projects provide extensive documentation: manuals, howto’s, tutorials, api documentation. Even though, it is obvious that the documentation is a weakness of CakePHP when compared with the other projects. Well, the most important point is that it is not easy to find the documentation for CakePHP. A page with all available documentation is missing. And on the homepage you only find a link to the wiki (yeah, there are also links to the api and the manual on the homepage, but they are hidden and you find them only by accident). What could we do to improve that weakness of CakePHP?

The last point, screencasts, is a “nice to have” point, at least for me. Nonetheless, all three projects have at least one screencast. symfony and RoR place the link to the screencasts prominently on the homepage, whereas you have to search the screencast for CakePHP. Yes, there exists a CakePHP screencast, but the link to the screencast is hidden in the wiki ;-)

Conclusion: I think CakePHP can keep up technologically with the other projects, but it has to learn to sell itself better :)