8 BEST PHP FRAMEWORKS FOR DEVELOPING AGILE APPLICATIONS FASTER

Undoubtedly, PHP is one of the programming languages which is rocking the development world since the last few years due to its inherent flexibility and comparatively easier learning curve. But, developing perfect agile software applications in PHP has always been a challenging and time consuming task. 

However, if you consider using a framework, things will get much easier and faster. Building complex applications on PHP frameworks will allow you to reuse generic components and also add modules while creating things on a unified structural foundation. 

This not only ensures high-end scalability but keeps your code much organized and allows your software application to evolve with time while facilitating long-term maintenance by complying with latest application development standards. This way, you will be able to look upon the other important aspects of application development, like maintaining consistent functionality and focusing on sustainable high-quality code.

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So, here I go with the 8 best PHP frameworks that will help you build agile applications with high-end interoperability, flexibility and robustness. 

1.     Laravel

Perfectly suited for all types of projects and even huge enterprise level applications, Laravel provides a solid foundation of well tested reliable code that works well on MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server and SQLite.

Basically, Laravel is a PHP web application framework that is built on top of several Symfony components and aims to facilitate complex web development by making tasks like authentication, routing, sessions and caching much easier with its expressive & elegant syntax. Besides providing easily accessible and most powerful tools to build large and robust applications, Laravel also comes with an inherently expressive migration system along with an inversion control container and integrated unit testing support. 

2.     Codeigniter

CodeIgniter is a powerful framework which is best suited to develop fully featured web applications in PHP. The best thing about this PHP framework is that it doesn’t require any configuration set up and also doesn’t impose any restrictive coding rules on the developer. Featuring a rich set of libraries, elegant toolkit, an extremely simple user interface and a logical structure; Codeigniter offers simplest solutions to the most complex application development requirements while being exceptionally fast. 

Being a designer, if you’re working on template files, Codeigniter is the one and only framework that can prove much more useful as it is based on MVC controller approach and thus allows for great separation between logic and presentation.

3.    CakePHP

CakePHP is a dynamic web application framework that comes packed with powerful features to let you to build sophisticated applications and prototypes rapidly using code generation features. From complex translations to database access; caching to validation and configuration to authentication; CakePHP has many features that are all built-in into the framework itself. 

So, you don’t need to break your head with complicated configurations. Just sync your database with the application framework and you're ready to go. To guide you through the application, CakePHP handles every aspect till the end. From providing a basic organizational structure to dealing with the user’s initial requests, filenames, database tables & final rendering of the webpage; the clean MVC architecture of this framework and built-in tools for validation and protection keeps your application absolutely safe and secure. 

4.     Symfony

Symfony is an all-powerful PHP application framework that significantly speeds up the development and maintenance work of your web application projects. The amazing thing about Symfony is that it doesn’t restrict you to the Symfony application development environment (naming conventions, classes, libraries and PHPUnit) and rather allows you to choose the software components that you want to use in your application. 

This makes Symfony the most flexible framework in terms of usability, scalability, maintainability and upgradability. Not just this, the framework also provides a set of prefabricated components that can be rapidly integrated into your web application so as to ensure you can work effectively to meet the complex requirements of even the most challenging projects.

Besides this, Symfony also gives you the freedom to choose between three versions based on the complexity of your application and project requirements – the complete version (Full Stack) in case you want a complex application; the Brick by Brick version to let you build your own framework according to the functionality needed, or the Microframework if you want to have a specific functionality in your projects.

             5.  Zend Framework 2

Zend Framework 2 is an open-source PHP application framework that constitutes powerful components in the form of a standard library that can be used for developing web applications using the object-oriented code. 

The framework also offers a highly robust supreme performance MVC implementation with an ability to extend easily and adapt to the needs of the complex project requirements through a modular base. Also, Zend Framework doesn’t bind you with any predefined constraints and you can implement anything the way you want to. 

6.     Phalcon

Phalcon is a fully-featured application development framework based on PHP 5 but implemented as a C extension. This is to ensure lower resource consumption and save processor time while delivering high performance. However, to build applications on this framework, you don’t need to learn and use the C programming Language unless you want to contribute to the Phalcon framework extensively and support it. 

Since Phalcon is loosely coupled and all the functionalities are exposed as PHP classes, you're free to use the full application framework or even specific modules as per your requirements. The best thing about Phalcon is - you can download and install it as a PHP module rather than extracting it to a separate directory unlike all other PHP frameworks which makes it a more flexible application framework. 

7.     Yii

Known for its powerful caching support and exclusively designed architecture that work efficiently even with Ajax, Yii is an all-powerful high-performance PHP application framework. From input validation to output filtering and SQL injection to Cross-site scripting prevention; Yii offers high-end security at its best. Based on the solid MVC architecture, the framework helps you develop clean code and model databases more efficiently.  

The framework also packages a set of validators that ensure safe collection of form inputs along with numerous other helper methods and cool widgets. Plus, there is extensive support for writing and running unit and functionality tests to offer efficient error handling. Since Yii is architecture in a way that it can work pretty well with third party code also, you can integrate the external data (data from other frameworks) also into your Yii powered application. 

8.     Aura

Aura is a PHP application framework that constitutes high quality code along with fully decoupled, standards-compliant and independent libraries. The framework takes full advantage of PHP5.4+. Each library is self-contained and is hence independently downloadable & can be integrated to use for application development. There are enough libraries to form a full framework and be used for application development. Featuring namespaces, well-tested functions, late static binding and short array syntax; Aura offers cutting edge functionalities that were not available in the older versions of PHP. 

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