Comparing Yii, Symfony 2 and Laravel frameworks.

HEAVY WORDS

May 9, 2017

First of all we must start acknowledging the importance of PHP, which is the most popular programming languages around the world. For instance, Facebook and Wordpress are based on it.

So let’s compare main features of the most popular PHP frameworks: Symfony, Laravel, and Yii.

1) TEMPLATING ENGINES

Templating engines allow the developer minimizing efforts and providing better functionality in writing front-end code. They also provide features such as automatic HTML escaping and filters, and fill the gap left by raw PHP.

Laravel Blade templating system

Blade lets you use PHP code in the views and has zero overhead to application performance. All the code in the view files is converted into raw PHP.

Yii Default templating system

Yii doesn't utilize any third party templating system by default, but that doesn't mean it lacks templating system support. The choice of the templating system depends on the development team. Twig and Smarty are recommended. Symfony uses Twig, so if you have used Symfony in past, you might want to utilize Twig for your next Yii project.

Symfony Twig template system

Twig is a modern templating system for PHP. Symfony utilizes Twig and enables developers to write clean code and the ability to do more than with raw PHP.

2) FRAMEWORK DIFFERENCES

Symfony provides the best modularity. It also uses the model and controller for developing a web application, which may look rusty for many new developers, but it works. Also, you can use the 30 components in your project in a modular fashion.

Yii uses an MVC framework.

Symfony does showcase brilliant complexity handling compared to other frameworks. Yii also utilizes components, but is not as modular as Symfony. Laravel doesn't provide a modular approach as sharp as the other two frameworks.

3) INSTALLATION

For Symfony Composer is crucial. Component handling is better done using the Composer PHP dependency manager.

Once installed, Yii provides you with a web app and a basic template to work on. So does Symfony 2.

Laravel is also easy to install using Composer create-project or via Laravel Installer.

4) RAPID DEVELOPMENT

Symfony stands out for being a robust framework with a strong community standing behind it. Laravel is growing rapidly, but still has a way to go before being considered the de facto choice for PHP development.

Laravel has an easy learning curve, and you'll find lots of tutorials online to help get you started. Yii takes performance to the next level, and provides code scaffolding for faster code generation and development.

5) PERFORMANCE

When it comes to choosing the best framework for coding a high-performance application, Yii stands out as the fastest PHP framework in our lot.

Laravel performance is highly debatable.