What is framework?

With over 40+ frameworks available, it’s really difficult to decide a particular one. There are so many comparisons based upon their available features. Comparison of some of them can be find here.

Well these comparisons are not based on their performance but on their supported features and most of these comparisons are done on outdated versions of frameworks. According to me, it’s no need to be stick with these comparisons.

I have experience of plenty of PHP frameworks and according to my experience, the best ones are CakePHP, ZEND, Symfony, CodeIgniter.

CakePHP.

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.

CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. If you're a developer who lives in the real world of shared hosting accounts and clients with deadlines, and if you're tired of ponderously large and thoroughly undocumented frameworks.

Symfony

Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP5. It provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise. Symfony is based on experience. It does not reinvent the wheel: it uses most of the best practices of web development and integrates some great third-party libraries.

ZEND

Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications. ZEND is consuming widely available APIs.