Comments on: PHP: Symfony vs. Zend

By: sudhir

sudhir — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:55:45 +0000

Use symfony as your framework and add zend components to enhance the missing pieces.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:57:05 +0000

I don’t think it can be stressed enough, if you have more than one project to maintain with any amount of code being shared, a framework like SF with a mature CLI is the way forward. Being “forced”, or perhaps better to say “suggested” to do things all one way is a huge advantage when it comes to maintenance. Plus, when new developers come on board their learning curve is greatly reduced. Which framework to use will always be personal preference. But knowing what you can and can’t do with a framework and how that impacts your requirements should always be the deciding factor.

By: Eno

Eno — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:00:55 +0000

I call ZF the “unframework” because it’s really a bunch of components. We used to call those libraries in the old days but now everything is a “framework” right?

Glad someone pointed out that everything about SF is customizable, including the directory structure and use of ORM.

Don’t know why you chose to compare with SF 1.0 when 1.1 has been out for ages. And now 1.2 is out. Its significant because 1.2 comes with Propel 1.3 via a plugin, AND also comes with Doctrine 1.0 via a plugin too (pick one or use both). This also means the ORM layer is now just a plugin (and so can be replaced or ignored). Doctrine has some nice features like schema migrations.

I also wanted to point out that 1.2 has been re-factored and de-coupled enough to be used as a bunch of separate components if you want, just like ZU.

Finally, it couldn’t hurt to mention some of the large sites running symfony Yahoo Bookmarks Delicious

By: Alvaro

Alvaro — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:50:05 +0000

I want to point that the symfony directory structure is customizable, just check the chapter 19 of the symfony book. As was pointed in the comments, the ORM is not a must, you can use plain old queries or whatever layer you want with symfony.

With frameworks people tend to forget that the code is just plain old PHP so a mysql_select_db() will always work

I will also like that the author point out the Propel bugs or at least updates this post.

By: Prathapan Sethu

Prathapan Sethu — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:21:21 +0000

We at QBurst have used both Zend, Symfony, CakePHP too and I would recommend Symfony anyday. It’s mature, is a real MVC framework, has good documentation and there is a lot of community support. In contrast, Zend has a lot more way to go to mature itself as a real MVC framework. True, it provides lot of libraries, but those are mostly object-oriented wrappers over existing methods – not really useful.

By: Iman

Iman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:02:30 +0000

I’m trying to work with ZF but I found it too hard to learn quick, always I use new things by using them in a real project, but this time it take a long time for me and I didn’t do any thing!!!
maybe I gets old!!!
I think its manual is the problem I cannot found things I looking for fast.
Anyway I continue to learn it well.
Iman

By: Paradigm Shift in Web Development to MVC » Andrew Rollins

Paradigm Shift in Web Development to MVC » Andrew Rollins — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:23:52 +0000

[...] like the Zend Framework the best, and this article pretty much explains my reasons. Plus, it’s sponsored by Zend Technologies, the creators of PHP. Some resources I’ve [...]

By: Nevio

Nevio — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:03:47 +0000

Hmm… something from me about SF and ZF.
They are both excellent. The only thing is how u look on them. If you need something rapidly, if you don’t care about application layout nor how things are working than use SF. You will end up with big project in just a second. From the other hand if you want total customized application use ZF. The only problem ( I consider this very good because a lot of “developers” use rapid frameworks and they don’t know a sh**. Tell them to write for example MVC and they will not know from where to start. ) with ZF is that you need to know A LOT about php to use it properly ( and build few things before actually start to do rapid appz. ). So if u don’t have a lot experience with php, if u don’t know what stands for OOP and MVC than go and use SF or any other framework. Don’t even think to start with ZF if you want to finish project in a blink of an eye . It will be quite easier to catch that “concepts” but from other hand if u do it over ZF noone will know ur application layout ( if no Z_C integrated ). How someone said ZF don’t have real MVC it’s more Controller with MV light-support which makes it even easier to catch ( personally i don’t like Zend_Controller. I wrote my own based upon ZF and similar to SF ). As well I think that it’s generally bad idea to compare ZF with SF. They are completely different except php syntax . For those who says bad things about this 2 frameworks well people don’t be as*hol**. Build ur own framework. They all give a lot of effort to make our life easier. “Framework” like idea cannot be finished. It will always be buggy no matter how much people spend time on it. ZF got a hell of a lot bugs. Controller, well I can only say that it can be written a hell of a lot better, Layout as well. SF u can’t customize ( i hate when someone restrict something. ). Application directory can be better but who knows. I like it on that way. Someone else like it on some other way. That’s normal n get use to it . SF vs. ZF = throw new Exception ( “non-comparable” )

By: Wil Sinclair

Wil Sinclair — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:09:10 +0000

First off, I’ll get the disclaimer out of the way- I’m the project lead for Zend Framework here at Zend. Nice comparison! The characterization of ZF is accurate (well, except for the ActiveRecord part, which Geoffrey pointed out already ). I just wanted to mention that we’ll have many features, including advanced forms support and a ‘use-at-will’ CLI tool in 1.5 (soon to be released). You might want to revisit this comparison at that time. And if you want more ORM functionality with ZF, this project has just come to my attention: http://xyster.devweblog.org/about. It’s built on top of ZF and adds an ORM component, amoung others.

Thanks for the kind words in the conclusion!
,Wil

By: Symfony vs Zend framework

Symfony vs Zend framework — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:25:43 +0000

[...] sentido web veo un post que resume una comparativa entre la opción de Zend y Symfony, publicada en karlkatzke.com, que llega a la siguiente [...]