PHP micro-framework recommendations?

Question

I've recently been assigned a very simple PHP project, which is essentially just putting some data from a form into a DB, and allowing the DB contents to be viewable by an admin.

I deal in Ruby most of the time nowadays, and for a project like this, I'd probably turn to something simple, like Sinatra; but I thought this might be a good opportunity to get into the PHP micro-framework world and see what solutions the PHP community has to offer nowadays.

I know it's very easy to just write a simple php script manually to do the job, but I'm hoping this way I can not only do the job, but also learn a new useful micro-framework for future projects.

Doing a little searching, the only one I could find so far was Limonade (http://github.com/sofadesign/limonade), but I'm curious if the SO community has any better / alternative suggestions!

Answer 1

Take a look at CakePhp. I bet you will like it if you mentioned your experience with Ruby. You coud generate your small web app with a few console comands.

Answer 2

i can recommend doo php http://doophp.com/ and europa http://europaphp.org/

they're both very lightweight, fast and ahve the necessary helpers/models. checkout codeigniter too and maby zend framework only using components!

Answer 3

I guess I wonder what does the footprint of the codebase matter in respect of the complexity of the project? It seems like it may actually matter less.

That said, personally I'd just use Zend. Sure, some will say (and perhaps correctly) that it's overkill for a small project. But again - who cares? It's not like setting up the basic Zend MVC is that hard. Zend_Tool can setup the application structure and the database connection. Just use Zend_db_Table to access the data (it's simple, no need for a ORM layer). Then just write a simple controller/view to handle your form and some basic auth.

And when this simple project needs better auth, more forms, and new features - you have a full featured framework to build it on.

Now I'm not saying 'you should use Zend', just saying that smaller size and simpler features and goals don't necessarily make a framework a better choice for 'smaller' projects. Especially if you already use a 'regular' sized framework - it should work fine for the simple projects as well.

Of course if you really want small, just use Twitto.

Answer 4

If it is simple CRUD operations with validations and you have very little time with you and you have hands on experience on ruby on rails and well acquainted with the scaffolding and active record patterns in Rails then my suggestion would be to use yii framework it is good and has a simple tutorial which will get you started immediately..... http://www.yiiframework.com