Zend Framework or Symfony

Question

I am moving on to the new PHP Framework. I was involved in heavy development using the CodeIgniter Framework, but now I find it too easy for my needs.

I pushed my choice back to Zend Framework or Symfony. I know that the learning curve for both is relatively high. However, I just wanted to get a general idea of ​​what it would be worth getting stuck on (since I will spend quite a lot of time familiarizing myself with the chosen structure).

If this helps to slightly reduce the answer. I'm not going to create a simple blog or anything like that. I need something that will support the full development of e-commerce systems, account managers and content management systems.

Answer 1

Personally, I worked with ZF since it was in version 1.6, and I am very pleased with it, I saw a very good improvement with 1.6, but I think that ZF lacks some ideas:

1- ORM, and later a very large implementation between ZF + Doctrine 1.2 gained very high popularity and I honestly rely on ZF + Doctrine in many projects and these days we can see a lot of integration between ZF + Doctrine2

2- a set of symphonies completely forgotten in ZF Do you think that the Zend framework does not comply with the Bundle Symfony principle? and I think it really is really soon to see (hopefully in ZF 2)

3- I had a lot of good points about symfony 1

- doctrine built in support - bundle principle - admin generators which can save a lot of time - symfony plugins is very popular - symfony documentation is really good 

finally, I looked deeply at symfony 1, but I am very concerned about the noise of Symfony2 at the end of 2010 and until today its public preview of http://symfony.com/download and I have been trying to spend some time studying it.

I wish you good luck :)

Update I do not want my answer to imply that ZF is not good, or symfony is better than ZF, ZF IMO is a very powerful library and is a developer of ZF === an advanced + powerful PHP OOP programmer.

Answer 2

I had to make this choice about 1.5 years ago. At first I looked at ZF and read it as much as possible, but at the end of the day I never liked it. It felt overdeveloped, and I was often lost in the code. Then I checked the Symphony with the Doctrine. I was able to access the codebase much faster than ZF. Since then I have used Symfony on 30 projects, everything from small sites to fairly large applications, and I could not be happier. Their generator-administrator tools have reduced the time taken to create a CMS by a ridiculous amount, and I am constantly adding my own add-ons so that future projects take even less time. In addition, their routing structure, form structure, and plugin architecture are very well built and very useful. (And the Doctrine is a message from God, but you can use it with ZF, it's just nice that Symfony uses it by default and has some closer integration with it.)

Fortunately, both ZF and Symfony are very extensible, so depending on what you choose, you will be better off than using CodeIgniter.

Answer 3

Personally, I would rather invest my time in exploring the Zend framework. I played with symfony in the past, and it has its merits, but I like the Zend framework more. For me, Symfony (1.x) has what “things fixed with duct tape” feel around them. There are many different plugins with different code quality. ZF is trying to raise the bar and looks like a more professional and thoughtful structure (and, in addition, ZF is very flexible). Symfony may be better suited for prototyping, although because of the admin generator.

Answer 4

I did not look at Zend, but before deciding on symfony, I looked at several other frameworks. For me it was the quality of the documentation - which is excellent for Symfony. The fact is that if you cannot use functions because they are poorly documented, then they are not functions at all. It really comes down to your own requirements and how everyone feels - as you know, the whole point of the framework is to work with it, if you always add additional code or exceptions, then this structure is not suitable for you.