Tuesday 25 July 2017

PHP Frameworks - Choosing Between Symfony and Yii




The features, libraries, and utility modules provided by PHP frameworks help developers to speed up web application development. The developers also have option to use open source PHP frameworks to build web applications rapidly without increasing project overheads. Both Symfony and Yii are open source PHP frameworks. Both Symfony and Yii are also used widely by modern web developers.
Symfony is designed as a collection of reusable PHP components. It enables developers to simplify web application development and maintenance by choosing from 30 standalone components. On the other hand, Yii simplifies web application development by providing features like MVC, caching, scaffolding, authentication, role-based access, and testing. It further enables programmers to create custom web applications by following 3 simple steps.
Hence, both Symfony and Yii come with features to help developers build a variety of web applications rapidly. But the two frameworks differ from each other in terms of design, features, and performance. The web developers must understand major differences between Symfony and Yii to choose the right PHP framework for their project. Also, they must keep in mind the precise needs of each project while comparing the popular PHP frameworks.
Understanding Important Differences between Symfony and Yii
Standalone Components
Unlike Yii, Symfony is designed as a collection on reusable and standalone collections. It allows developers to choose from 30 standalone components based on the precise needs of each project. Hence, the developers can speed up web application development by availing components like asset, config, console, debug, finder, form, routing, security, templating and validator. They can further use the standalone components independent of Symfony.
Full-Stack Framework
Unlike Symfony, Yii is designed as a full-stack web framework. It comes with features to speed up development of both front-end and back-end of a web application. Also, it simplifies web application development by providing features like caching, testing, scaffolding, authentication, and role-based access control. Yii further allows programmers to work with multiple template systems and receive user input efficiently through forms.
MVC Programming Paradigm
Yii simplifies web application development and maintenance by supporting helper model-view-controller (MVC) architecture. The developers can take advantage of MVS design to build complex web applications rapidly by keeping their business logic and user interface layers separated. On the other hand, Symfony does not claim to be a MVC framework. But it allows developers to simplify web application development and maintenance using standalone components.
Performing Repetitive Tasks
Often web developers opt for a PHP framework that enables them to perform repetitive tasks efficiently. In comparison to Symfony, Yii enables programmers to perform repetitive tasks more efficiently. It further makes it easier for programmers to create elements like forms, active record classes, controller, and new classes for controllers by providing a special code generation module. – Gii.
Templating System
Web developers take advantage of the template engines provided by the PHP frameworks to write and maintain front-end code efficiently.  Symfony requires developers to use Twig. As a modern template engine, Twig helps Symfony programmers to keep the front-end code clean and concise. On the other hand, Yii supports several third-party templating engines including Twig. Hence, the users have option to choose from multiple templating engines while developing web applications with Yii.
Database Support
Both Symfony and Yii allows web developers to work with a number of popular SQL and NoSQL databases including MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft BI, PostgreSQL, and MangoDB. But symphony supports more databases than Yii. It enables developers to work with databases like Apache Jackrabbit, CouchDB, DynamoDB, GemFire, GraphDB, MemBase, and MemCacheDB.
Testing
Both PHP frameworks help developers to test the web application elaborately. Symfony 2 comes with integrated PHPUnit library. The developers can use PHPUnit to run all tests with a single command. On the other hand, Yii enables programmers to perform acceptance testing with Codeception. However, the developers have to install Codeception globally and configure it properly to perform acceptance testing efficiently.
Performance
Yii is considered to be faster than other PHP frameworks including Symfony. However, the developers can boost the speed and performance of Symfony by using it properly. According to PHP framework benchmark, Yii2 processes 410.08 requests per second, whereas Symfony 3 processes 131.50 requests per second. Hence, Yii2 is processed more requests per second than Symfony 3.
Usage
Both Yii and Symfony can be used for development of large and complex web applications. But many programmers prefer Symfony to Yii while developing large websites. Yii lacks the built-in extensions provided by other modern PHP frameworks. Symfony makes it easier for programmers to manage all aspects of the web application efficiently, while protecting it from varying security threats. Also, Symfony is considered to be more scalable than other Yii.
On the whole, both Yii and Symfony have their own pros and cons. A web developer must keep the pros and cons in mind while comparing the widely used PHP frameworks. However, it is also important for the programmers to evaluate Symfony and Yii based on precise needs of each project.

Tuesday 18 July 2017

How Important is Smarty for PHP Developers?


At present, PHP is more popular than other server-side programming languages. The latest versions of PHP further simplifies website and web application development by providing an array of new language features, enhanced speed, and reduced resource consumption. The programmers also have option to execute the code written in PHP 7 in two distinct ways – embed the PHP code into HTML code or execute the PHP code through frameworks and content management systems.

While developing small and simple web applications, many developers prefer embedding PHP code into HTML code. But they had to embed new PHP scripts while adding new features and functionalities to the web application. The additional scripts make the application code complex and messy. As a template engine, Smarty helps programmers to keep the application code simple and maintainable by keeping business logic and presentation separated. The developers can further use Smarty to parse templates into PHP scripts, and reuse the parsed templates seamlessly.



Features that Make Smarty Useful for PHP Developers



Keep Business Logic and Presentation Separate
Smarty is not a PHP framework. But like robust PHP frameworks, it enables users to implement model-view-controller (MVC) paradigm. The programmers can use Smarty to keep the application’s business logic (PHP code) and presentation (HTML and CSS) separated. The separation helps programmers to prevent the application code from becoming complex and messy. Also, the separation makes it easier for them to maintain and update the PHP applications within a short amount of time.


Faster Parsing Engine
Smarty is designed as a template engine. It helps PHP programmers to parse templates into PHP scripts. The version 3 of Smarty further comes with a rewritten and new template parser. The redesigned template parser makes Smarty faster than other template engines for PHP. Also, it enables developers to control template syntax, and avail functions like in-template math, recursive template and line-precision error messages.

Keep Templates Fast and Maintainable
Smarty compiles a template into PHP script only once when the application is invoked for the first time. It does not recompile the templates each time the application is invoked. Also, it does not require users to manage or maintained the compiled versions of templates. The one-time parsing and compilation boosts the web application’s performance significantly, in addition to making templates fast and maintainable.


Template Portability


The programmers can use Smarty to parse templates into reusable PHP scripts. But the templates still remain language-agnostic. The developers can use specialized tools to compile the Smarty templates into JavaScript and other programming languages. Also, they can easily port the templates to other programming languages with identical syntax rules.


Template Security
While using Smarty, the programmers can edit the templates without managing their compiled versions. But it does not allow users to access and make changes to the templates directly. The users have to make changes to the templates through specific Smarty functions. The Smarty security feature boosts the web application’s security by preventing third-party users to access or modify the templates directly.


Template Caching
Smarty further enables programmers to boost the performance of PHP applications by caching templates which require longer computation time. They can further call two simple functions – display() and fetch() – to store the cached output in a single file. Hence, a single file will contain multiple template and configuration files. The web developers can further specify what must be cached and for how long the templates need to be cached.
Template Inheritance

The latest version of Smarty comes with a new feature called template inheritance. The new feature enables programmers to maintain templates as single pages. The users are no longer required to manage templates with specific tags. They can further make one template inherit content from another template, and change the content blocks within each template smoothly. The feature makes it easier for PHP programmers to manage and maintain templates.

Despite being an open source template engine, Smarty has been updating at regular intervals. The PHP developers can use Smarty 3 to avail a new template parser and runtime template inheritance. However, the web developers must keep in mind the specific requirements of each project while opting for Smarty.