I’ve fiddled with Zend Framework a bit, and even developed a simple MVC application structure, i.e. just the bare bones. Looking at my code, I though, initializing so many classes, is this Framework efficient?
Efficiency is the concern of many programmers if their project is going to be hammered with high internet traffic. I noticed certain slowdowns in various requests, especially querying the ACL and Auth. But that was fine, since I didn’t do the necessary caching of configuration files.
But still, the amount of overhead was quite large if you’re planning on using a standard shared hosting. Luckily, Zend does provide a performance guide on the Zend Framework manual. If you follow it, you’ll surely be able to significantly improve the framework’s performance, but I still doubt if shared hosting would handle it with ease.
I’m currently developing a project with CodeIgniter 1.7.0 (the current version as of now), and it seems to be more than enough for what I need. With CI, the advantage is that you can start straight away, seeing the screencasts available on their websites. You’d understand most of the structural parts there itself, and a well written User Guide always to your rescue.
Its not that one framework is better than the other. Zend is definitely powerful, and I’m still learning new things about it everyday. I’m sure I’ll get an opportunity to use it in a real life project.
The choice of a framework should always be based on your convenience, your requirements, the overhead, and the platform selected for deployment. If I’m simply making a Contact Us form, I wont even be needing a framework (duh!).
I created a simple “test” application in CakePHP. Unfortunately, in my shared hosting, its caching didn’t work. The problem persisted even with default CakePHP setting (all directory structure etc.). The problem seems to be with the shared host, which I no longer use. I don’t really know what the problem was, but now everything’s fine with a good new host. CakePHP still is in RC3 as of now, and RC2 at the time of writing my “test” application.
Writing it took about a two to three days, because I was still learning CakePHP’s ORM and Naming Conventions, which I had to constantly refer to. It’ll become a habit soon, just need more experience. Because of the caching problem, I rewrote the entire application in a day (hey, it was really small) in pure PHP and Smarty especially for its built-in cache support and design/code separation.
It wasn’t that difficulty after all. But if I were to really develop the application, I’d have used a framework, for future scalability. For me, CI looks like a good choice for nice code organization, as well as basic Active Record and Validation support. Its quite feature rich, I must admit.
CakePHP is a real monster, but I’m still waiting it to come out of RC. As far as Zend is concerned, its quite great too, but I’ll need a resourceful server (not a weak shared hosting) for any serious decent traffic website.
Happy coding!
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