zend, codeIgniter or symfony2

[cali_dotcom]

hi, i am about to rewrite an application that was written in zend 1.8. the owner complains that its quite slow so his default reaction is to rewrite it in any other framework of my choosing. the application is sometimes slow because they have not implemented any caching mechanism at all. i am a zend fan, although i think its way too big, but now im am forced to consider another framework. which of these frameworks do you guys prefer and why?

CI was my first framework and I liked it coz it allowed 'looseness'. The MVC wasn't stricly required, which was cool for a beginner. Have you had a look at Yii - this is my current favourite, only downside is that it doesn't have the same userbase as the other ones you mention.

[Dani]

DaniWeb is written using CodeIgniter. I don't really have any experience with other frameworks, but I do like that it's not very in-your-face. It's super lightweight, and I can take advantage of what I want to take advantage of, and do everything else my own way (to the extent of ignoring CI's model layer entirely if I choose).

[mschroeder]

I've had extensive experience with all three of those frameworks.

Symfony2 - At the moment Symfony2 is the best framework I've used. The biggest feature of the whole "framework" is that it is nothing more than a collection of bundles architected together. It is extremely powerful and flexible, and you can replace pretty much any aspect of the system with your own implementations, but if you do not have a serious OOP background as well as a desire to learn how to use a DIC etc then Symfony2 is not for you. It can be a challenge to deploy and there is a STEEP learning curve, but once you've invested some time it is very hard to use other frameworks.

ZF1 - Used to be my favorite framework because of the structure and the access to documentation and users. The lack of native php namespaces and some of the design decisions made some of the components feel hackish in their implementations, but it worked and it worked well. However my experience with ZF2 has been much like Symfony2 but they are vastly different from one another and ZF2 has yet to have a "stable" release.

CI - I started using this framework when I started at my current employer. Personally I find it to be unorganized and convoluted (var_dump a get_instance() call just and look at the recursion and repetition in the array) . There are lots of 3rd party libraries that attempt to bring it more in line with a usuable and coherent framework but I feel like you spend a lot of time un-CI'ing things that are awkwardly setup in the first place. However it is very approacable for anyone who has never used a bigger framework.

[Dani]

mschroeder, don't say it's so!!!!!!!!

Ho ho, he's pretty much on the button with that. CI is a bit of a mess - you've noticed that yourself by now? I've stopped using it for more demanding projects as the hoops you have to jump through to get it do what you want is beyond my patience threshold. Symfony2 gave me a nosebleed (STEEP LC indeed for a OOP noob), so I didn't invest the required time into learning it. But Yii on the other hand... (I've already pushed that - nice tuts on YT too)

[mschroeder]

Don't get me wrong. CI works and there are some great things built on it. But building a maintanable modular application is a nightmare. Testing is nearly impossible and spending time to make things testable often results in a huge dependency list. But, where there is a will there is a way and often getting a product to the market fast takes precedence.