Now that I've had the chance to spend about a week or so on CodeIgniter, I really have to say that it's a marvelous MVC framework for PHP.



There are a few things that I'm finding that really make it stand out:

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• Lightweight and flexible - you have a lot of control over what code is loaded, and what is not. Extending the code library is incredibly easy.
  
• Solid base libraries - most of the libraries you would need to start a web app are already available as libraries, helpers and plugins. No reinventing the wheel here.
  
• Stellar documentation - the documentation is outstanding as far as open source projects go.
  
• Install and Go - starting is a matter of dropping a folder into your web server, and you can start writing code within minutes. You don't have to sit with the documentation for hours before starting.
  

I know that CakePHP is probably way more popular right now, but CodeIgniter is nothing to sneeze at. Choosing a framework can be a very personal thing, because everyone has a different way of programming. The thing that I like about CodeIgniter is that it's designed the way I would probably design a framework... if I was crazy enough to do such a thing.

Tags: codeigniter, mvc, php, cakephp

I've been looking at various MVC (model-view-controller) frameworks for web programming, such as Ruby on Rails, CakePHP and CodeIgniter.



All three are very nice frameworks, designed to shorten the development life cycle for web applications. After watching the screencast for CodeIgniter, I was highly impressed by the small learning curve to getting applications up and running. CodeIgniter is a good enough framework to help a beginning PHP programmer learn solid technique and form. CakePHP is more powerful, but at the price of complexity, making it ideal for a seasoned PHP programmer. Rails is pretty awesome, but Ruby is still considered a "cutting edge" programming language.

The key to any project is to provide a framework that accelerates the development process. I really like CodeIgniter because you can have a decent prototype of a web application very quickly. The documentation is stellar (never underestimate the value of quality documentation), at least compared to CakePHP.

So far, CodeIgniter is going to be my framework of choice. It's light, it's fast, and it's easy. Oh ya, it's free too.

Tags: php, mvc, framework, codeigniter