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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING SYMFONY, CAKEPHP, AND ZEND FRAMEWORK
OPEN SOURCE PHP WEB FRAMEWORKS
Another question we want to answer is why we have chosen these three particular frameworks. Are
they really better in any way, or are we biased or perhaps have some fi nancial interest in promoting
them? Well, starting with that last question, we are completely independent open source enthusiasts
and we wanted to compare free (“free” as free speech) software only, so there is certainly no Evil
Corporation behind us, and nobody told us which frameworks to choose. We answer the question
of whether they’re better than other frameworks in the following sections.
There were once closed source PHP frameworks as well, but due to widespread
success of the free frameworks, nowadays closed source frameworks are a thing
of the past.
Comparison of Popular Interest
We have chosen Symfony, CakePHP, and Zend Framework due to their popularity in the web devel-
opers’ community, including our own experience in PHP. We believe that open source programming
tools show at least some correlation between their popularity and quality because they are used only
if they are really useful. In that way they are different from things like proprietary software or pop
music, in which quality can be easily replaced by aggressive marketing as the popularity gaining
factor.
It turns out that the public interest in web frameworks can be measured quite objectively. Figure 1-2
shows search volumes for various PHP frameworks in Google Insights for Search. You can easily see
that there are four leading competitors. All the others combined are less popular than any one of
these four. The Lithium and Prado frameworks have been deliberately omitted because their names
are nonunique, which generates false positives in trends. We have checked these names in specifi c
categories and found that they are not signifi cant as search terms, either.
When users search for information on a framework, the search results usually refl ect talk about it
on various blogs and forums, items about learning this technology, and fi nally developing applica-
tions using it. So public interest in a web framework results in real, long-term use of it.
CodeIgniter was really problematic for us. We had a long debate whether it should be included as
one of the main frameworks. Perhaps now it is as frequently searched for as Symfony or CakePHP,
but what matters more is the area under the graph because it refl ects how many people have found
the answers they sought and have probably used this knowledge for their projects.
Of course this graph shows nothing more than search volume, and when you see such fast growth it
is hard to distinguish a long-lasting trend from temporary hype. We know that CodeIgniter is really
good, so it is defi nitely more than a fad, and perhaps in a year or two it will have its place among
the leading web tools.
We nally agreed that three men against four frameworks is not an equal fi ght. We have not com-
pletely forsaken CodeIgniter, though; its features are described, along with Lithium and Agavi, in
Appendix B, where a simple application is developed using each one of them.
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