Cake PHP vs Zend Framework

The Zend Framework, developed by Zend Technologies is an open-source, object oriented web-application framework implemented in PHP 5. It is widely known as ZF and is developed with the purpose of making things easier for PHP developers and supporting best practices at the same time. CakePHP too, is an open-source web application framework used for creating web applications written in PHP. It is developed by Cake Software Foundation, Inc. It is written in PHP and is based on the model of Ruby on Rails.

Zend Framework has easy methods of licensing with the new BSD license and a swift and well-tested code base that your business can rely upon. It makes use of commonly available APIs from well known vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr and API providers and catalogers such as StrikeIron and Programmable Web.

ZF offers a simple component library to provide 80 percent of the functionality mostly needed by developers. The rest of the 20 percent can be altered as per your requirements of the business. This can be done since it has a flexible architecture and you do not need any configuration file to get started with. Due to this, training costs are lessened and the product reaches the market sooner. Moreover, Zend Framework also offers:

• AJAX support through JSON, which offers ease-of-use of the framework.
• The PHP version of the Lucene Search engine.
• Simple access to data formats needed in Web 2.0 applications.
• The ideal destination to utilize and publish web services.
• Top quality, object-oriented PHP 5 class library.

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that offers a flexible architecture for development, maintenance and deployment of applications. It uses the usual design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm that helps lower development expenses and does not need the developers to write a lot of code. CakePHP boasts of clients like Mozilla Addons, Scratch by MIT, Yale Daily News, Onion Store and MapMe to name a few.

Just like ZF, CakePHP does not require configuration. It is very simple to use. The company has a user friendly community called #cakephp on IRC that helps new users to begin. It is distributed under the MIT License and promises Best Practices like security, authentication and session handling. It has an object-oriented approach to keep you at ease.

Overall, both these frameworks are good to use as per your requirements. CakePHP is suitable for developers new to MVC and those who require stricter conventions. ZF is a choice for those who need better control over the application design and built-in support for renowned Web services. Both the frameworks are developing fast and the choice is entirely yours.

curtsy: Douglas Brown