What is the best PHP framework for building a website around a heavily relational PostgreSQL database?

Question

First of all, the framework of choice needs to have excellent support for PostgreSQL. I don't care about MySQL because it doesn't have half of the features the application I will be porting requires. (And when I say excellent support, I mean that their approach to database drivers has not been solely trained in MySQL).

The ideal framework:

• Should take full advantage of PHP 5.3 and PostgreSQL 8.4 features
• Should support new technologies such as OpenID and social networking
• Should support complex relationships between database relations
• Should have an intelligent validation system
• Should have a basic library of helpful views (such as pagination, navigation, etc)
• Should probably be MVC based
• Should have excellent documentation and an active development community
• Should namespace classes intelligently

What I'm looking for might be more of a library of utilities, as I really don't want to be restricted by the framework in what I can and can not do. I have my own small library of core classes that take care of business logic, and I will most likely want to integrate those with the new framework as well.

Thanks!

Answer 1

As far as i know there arent any frameworks that take full advantage of php 5.3. Bothy Symfony 2 and Zend Framework 2.0 will though. However, im nt sure when ZF will be released and Symfony wont be released until the end of 2010.

That said thes would stil be the Frameworks i recommend. ZF if you want something component based, Symfony if youd like a fully integrated framework with alot of dev tools. In either case id recommend Doctrine as the ORM. ITs the default ORM of symfony and so is integrated throughout the framework. You can use it with Zend but youll have to "strap it in" yourself - then again you have to strap everythign in Zend in yourself more or less :-)