Over the last week Ive been testing out some php frameworks and seeing what they are like (mainly the install process and checking out the structure of the application).
The first one i tried was symfony. First off, having a php web application that has to be created via command line sucks! (I think you can install it without having ssh access but it is a bit of a mission). After following the instructions step by step, the program just kept throwing errors when creating a project. I may have missed something or my server wasn’t set up quite right but overall i just wasn’t impressed with the installer, IT IS JUST TOO HARD! In the end I had to install it straight from the svn which worked fine, but the styles didn’t come through so looking at the pages was very plain.
When I say the installation is just too hard, I am talking in the fact that I should just be able to copy over some files and expect it to work for a php application, and if it needs some type of installation, then have a web install page. I believe that if you have no linux adminstration skills then you are pretty much screwed if you wish to use the symfony framework.
The second framework i tried was cakephp, now cakephp is how you install a php framework. All i had to do was copy the files over and it was up and running. There is not much more i can say on cakephp because the setup was very easy and took me 2 mins not 2 hours.
As for the coding aspects of the frameworks, I didn’t really get my hands too dirty and they both to seem to work in the same manner with following the MVC architecture. I’m sure both frameworks have there advantages but based on the install process i would be swinging to cakephp.