What is The Most Popular PHP Framework?

What is PHP framework and why to use it?

The simplest answer to what is a PHP framework and why use it is that a PHP web framework is an application framework designed to simplify the creation and maintenance of web applications. It does this by providing reusable codes for frequent programming tasks, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you start a new project.

Using a PHP Framework helps you to keep the structure of your application organized, helps you to focus on other things instead of coding everything from scratch, it helps you build faster websites with more reliability and stability, and it allows you to easily follow best practices in coding standards.

 

How to choose the right framework?

When choosing a PHP framework, you need to ask yourself the following questions.

• Which framework supports your needs?
• Does it have enough community support?
• Are you familiar with it?
• Is the documentation comprehensive enough?
• How popular is it amongst other developers?

The most popular frameworks are Laravel, Symfony, Codeigniter and CakePHP.

Popularity of the frameworks

The most popular framework is not necessarily the best one for a given PHP project. It all depends on what you are looking to get out of your chosen framework, and how it fits in with the rest of your development stack. Some frameworks will provide more functionality, while others will be easier to work with. Still, there's nothing wrong with going with the most popular option if you think it's a good fit for your needs—in fact, as explained below, that can be a great choice!

To measure popularity, we look at several factors:

• Number of downloads per month

• Total number of downloads

• Community activity (number and frequency of contributions)

• Discussion forum activity (number and frequency of topics)

Learn which PHP frameworks are used most.

Codeigniter is a lightweight framework, while other frameworks, like Laravel and Symfony, are more heavy-weight frameworks. Micro frameworks, such as Slim are also popular and provide basic features for building web applications. Composer is a dependency manager which allows you to specify libraries that need to be installed in your project.