Been checking these other Frameworks -- nothing as good as CI (so far)

[eluser]JPrieto[/eluser]
My goal is to be an expert in a PHP FRAMEWORK

I started with CI, but just want to make sure there is no better one (for my taste) out there.

so I have been looking into some of its competitors as of 4 days ago

so far all I look for is the easy of (*) installation, and (*) the creation of a "hello world" page. Then, how helpful and friendly is the user forum. And that's it.

So far ... "to me" nothing comes close to CI.

I narrow my favorites to

1. CI
2. FUSE
3. Yii

Yii is the latest craze, but for me it was confusing to install and get it to work (but i am new to php), their documentation leave out many basics, important details, and assume you are a pro (my personal opinion). But most of their users swear by it, and many even claim they migrated from CI and kohana. I am still playing with it in case i am too dumb now to get it.

Just now I discovered CodeExtingisher .... but i think it is beyond me for now. Im not really sure what it is yet other that it is based on CI and makes CRUD easy to generate. I will try to understand it better in the next few days.
Anyway....

CI rocks!

it is what i am sticking to (so far)

ps: i looked into other frameworks because i keep reading that CI is okay for small to medium size applications --- but what is it about it that experts feel that CI cannot handle large or advance applications? That is what confuses me, because I feel that it could do that, but "those who know" disagree with me.

what say ye?

[eluser]JPrieto[/eluser]
[quote author="JPrieto" date="1245804008"]

CI rocks!

it is what i am sticking to (so far)

ps: i looked into other frameworks because i keep reading that CI is okay for small to medium size applications --- but what is it about it that experts feel that CI cannot handle large or advance applications? That is what confuses me, because I feel that it could do that, but "those who know" disagree with me.

what say ye? [/quote]

[eluser]garymardell[/eluser]
Another framework i have been checking out is the newly released (beta) framework Garden that is powering Vanilla2 forum. http://markosullivan.ca/garden-vanilla-2-on-github-now/ It seems to have alot going for it.

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
wrt Garden

Yeah, that does look interesting.

I see they've hitched their wagon to jquery. Coincidentally what I'll probably be adopting, but it might slow down some people who prefer other JS libraries. The database structure class looks especially interesting for people deploying upgrades to their PHP applications. The database class seems to strongly encourage you along the path of an active record approach. Initial observations - haven't delved into it much. I like the style of the documentation, but it appears to be a very young framework.

[eluser]jayrulez[/eluser]
CI doesn't do it for me. I'm swinging like a pendulum between Yii framework(http://yii.googlecode.com) and I-Framework(http://if.4kiki.net)

For me CI is not updated often enough and i don't really get this rave about it's documentation and it's community(i believe thats only really useful to php beginners).

And the biggest bone i have to pick with CI is it's support for PHP4... I believe it's the responsibility of PHP developers to master the latest version of php to capitalize on the new functionalities that it offers.

PHP 4 was so long ago.

[eluser]Thorpe Obazee[/eluser]
[quote author="jayrulez" date="1245822735"]
And the biggest bone i have to pick with CI is it's support for PHP4... I believe it's the responsibility of PHP developers to master the latest version of php to capitalize on the new functionalities that it offers.

PHP 4 was so long ago.[/quote]

The choice on the version is not always dictated by the developer. Without CI's PHP 4 support, I don't think I'd even be using CodeIgniter at work.

[eluser]garymardell[/eluser]
[quote author="jedd" date="1245820908"]wrt Garden

Yeah, that does look interesting.

I see they've hitched their wagon to jquery. Coincidentally what I'll probably be adopting, but it might slow down some people who prefer other JS libraries. The database structure class looks especially interesting for people deploying upgrades to their PHP applications. The database class seems to strongly encourage you along the path of an active record approach. Initial observations - haven't delved into it much. I like the style of the documentation, but it appears to be a very young framework.[/quote]

Oh its definitely young. Still needs the documentation and as i said its only in beta. A plus is that vanilla2 will be written on it which makes for a good example of of documentation in itself. You can really see how the framework was meant to be used. Also means there will be a free forum you can run along side your application. I do like the way it works where There is an applications folder, and there is the garden application which can run the user side and permissions and everything in that vein. Prevents you having to write alot of code everything. Then you can write your own application in the folder to use garden features. Applications can be turned on and off in the admin panel. It will definitely make writing custom scripts and adding a integrated forum easy, and as more applications are written having that common base could well mean alot of plug and play almost.

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
jayrulez CI doesn't update a lot but do you need a lot of the updates done on the other frameworks? If you are mid development and there is an update you could update the app but are you going to update all the apps/sites you developed as soon as an update appears?

I agree with bargainph, if it wasn't for the php4 support i wouldn't use CI.

I agree with you the forum attracts beginners but do you really need to be advanced code for simple things? Php is written to make it easy creating websites. If you really want advanced stuff you go for the established languages.

garymardell it seems your the garden evangelist here, i took a look at the framework and like you wrote the framework has a admin panel. I'm not sure if it's such a good thing. Why should a framework need an admin panel? And how secure is the admin panel?

[eluser]garymardell[/eluser]
Lol still an codeigniter fan boy dont worry. Just looks pretty neat for some of the stuff i plan on working on. Thats the beauty of using an open source admin panel, you can check yourself and have hundreds of other people checking the framework admin too for bugs and security. I was a fan of vanilla forum, even co-wrote some addons for it. So its good to see a new version and a new framework. Think it has some good principles that even codeigniter could take away with it.

[eluser]jayrulez[/eluser]
[quote author="xwero" date="1245862221"]jayrulez CI doesn't update a lot but do you need a lot of the updates done on the other frameworks? If you are mid development and there is an update you could update the app but are you going to update all the apps/sites you developed as soon as an update appears?

I agree with bargainph, if it wasn't for the php4 support i wouldn't use CI.

I agree with you the forum attracts beginners but do you really need to be advanced code for simple things? Php is written to make it easy creating websites. If you really want advanced stuff you go for the established languages.

garymardell it seems your the garden evangelist here, i took a look at the framework and like you wrote the framework has a admin panel. I'm not sure if it's such a good thing. Why should a framework need an admin panel? And how secure is the admin panel?[/quote]

Yes i usually update all my apps as soon as changes are made in the repository as long as running with that update wont affect the stability of the program.

Its not as simple as "simple things". its granted that php is somewhat simpler than the other languages but alot of people have trouble with php any way since there are varying degrees of difficulty.

I'm not bashing codeignitor, however i think for such a "mature/established" framework, there are alot of things CI could have done differently.
i'm sure some can agree that even with the "legendary" CI doc/community, there are too many mistakes made mistakes made by people relatively new to the framework/php. ALot of times that is the fault of the user but in cases the framework is at fault.

for example i see so many posts with people the simple business of url rewriting and other url related issues.

I believe that with the appearance of so many new eye-catching frameworks, codeignitor's creator/s need/s to strenghten its weaknesses or it will be dethroned relatively soon.