Laravel or Symfony or Yii: which is the best PHP web app development framework? This is one of the most baffling questions for web developers as well as businesses who want to develop their website.
It is never easy for web developers to turn the design of the website into clean code in the least possible time. This is where the concept of the frameworks comes in. It enables developers to build a website in the least possible time.
In this blog post, we will compare three most popular PHP frameworks Laravel, Symfony, and Yii on different parameters.
Symfony Vs Laravel Vs Yii: A Brief Introduction
Symfony– Symfony is the powerful PHP Framework enables developers to build a stunning and user-friendly web application without any hassle. With this framework, it becomes very easy to perform different experiments. Some of the large open source projects like Drupal and PHBB use a Symfony framework.
Laravel – Laravel is the most popular and undisputedly the king of PHP framework. With excellent community support and easy learning curve, this framework proves a great interface to build a complex back-end system in the least possible time.
Yii– Yii is the powerful, fast and secure web application framework that enable the developer to create web portals and forums in short frame of time, jQuery integration proves helpful for front-end developers to embrace the framework quickly.
Initially, in 2008; Yii was lagging behind the Symfony and Laravel, but the release of Yii 2.0 proves a turning point and become popular among developers along with Symfony.
Image source: g2crowd.com
Framework Differences
Every framework is created differently. Symfony works on reusable components and provides the best modularity. Symfony also utilizes the model and controller for developing a web application, which may look rusty for many new developers, but it works. Also, Symfony is a good example of the modular framework. You can use the 30 components provided by Symfony in your project in a modular fashion.
Yii uses an MVC framework. (Symfony does provide support for MVC, which is discussed in more detail in Is Symfony2 an MVC framework on the blog.sznapka.pl site.)
Symfony can be used for rapid development and complex projects. Even though there is a debate on which framework is better for complex projects, Symfony does showcase brilliant complexity handling compared to other frameworks. Yii also utilizes components but is not as modular as Symfony. Laravel doesn’t provide a modular approach as sharp as the other two frameworks.
If you are looking for a modular framework, go for Symfony. Otherwise, Laravel and Yii are both great choices.
Installation
The three frameworks provide multiple installation procedures. If you are using Composer for handling packages, you will be happy to know that all the frameworks can be installed via Composer.
For Symfony, the role of the Composer is more crucial. The idea of component handling is best done by using the Composer PHP dependency manager.
There are other ways of installing the respective frameworks. For example, you can install the frameworks using simple archive method.
After installation, Yii provides you with a web app and a basic template to work on. Symfony 2 also provides a demo app to get started.
Laravel is also easy to install using Composer create-project or via Laravel Installer. Check out the Laravel installation guide for details.
Rapid Development
From the perspective of the company or the client, quickly getting the application to the market to meet consumer demand and beat competitors is important. Symfony stands out for being a robust framework with a strong community standing behind it. Laravel is growing rapidly, but still, has a way to go before being considered the de facto choice for PHP development. On the other hand, if you have no knowledge of any PHP frameworks and want to get started as quickly as possible, consider Laravel. Laravel has an easy learning curve, and you’ll find lots of tutorials online to help get you started. Yii takes performance to the next level and provides code scaffolding for faster code generation and development.
Performance
The performance of any application only matters if it is a real-time application using critical data. How many web-based applications depend on high performance? Not many, but the performance of frameworks can play a crucial role in many projects.
Social networks are a prime example of real-time events and one of our star streamers, jadson, built a mobile social network using Yii2. When it comes to choosing the best framework for coding a high-performance application, Yii stands out as the fastest PHP framework in our lot.
Laravel performance is highly debatable. It is slowest, but does that matter? You’ll find online resources for speeding up performance, including a guide on GitHub for making your Laravel application faster.
Explore the strengths of Laravel, Symfony, and Yii to choose the right technology.
Laravel vs Symfony vs Yii: A Complete Checklist
Conclusion:
In the detailed comparison of Laravel vs. Symfony vs. Yii, all three PHP based frameworks are excellent options which offer a full-stack web app development environment for website developers.
All these three frameworks have both pros and cons but for me, Laravel is a winner that is emerging as a star with no sign of stopping. Still, Symfony and Yii are both excellent frameworks. Symfony is well-established PHP framework with a bigger, more mature community. Yii is unique in its own sense and it is secure, robust, and gets a complex job done in comparatively less time.
If you have any query related to any PHP framework or you want to develop your website ob any of PHP framework, feel free to contact PixelCrayons: a leading PHP development company in India.
We're here to kickstart your project on the best-suited framework.
