Comments on: CodeIgniter: I Don’t Hate It

By: John

John — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:26:40 +0000

Hey nice! I was looking for a lightweight PHP framework a little while ago, this probably would’ve been easier than rolling my own (which I did, perhaps naively). I had seen CodeIgniter a while back when I was looking at ExpressionEngine, but never checked it out.

The framework I’ve “written” (it’s basically just a bunch of folders and a couple of includes) is entirely YAML based with no config at all, and very basic conventions. No database either. Pretty limited/limiting, but it’s also really transparent and definitely keeps out of the way. The idea is that, in many cases, my clients want a primarily static site they can update themselves, and getting a database involved is really overkill. So writing/reading from YAML (with a basic admin interface) is kind of a nice way to put together semi-static stuff. Bill-paying stuff, if you like
It’s called Seamonster, and I’ll probably post it up somewhere soon. Nice to see you at youtube/Jeremy’s, if only briefly!

By: Manny

Manny — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:29:40 +0000

I totally agree with your assertions about Cake’s documentation - it is basically non-existent. Check the forums and you’ll see there are a lot RTFM - like WTF - what manual!

- Cake has never had a stable release.
- Current release 1.2 beta has a lot of sheeit deprecated - sign of poor design
- F’N SLOW. A fairly simple page with a couple of queries takes between .5 to 1 second. This time includes using APC, caching queries and elements (view)
- uses a lot of memory. From my experience between 6-9 MB per request
- my pet peeve is you end up writing more code to prep a query than actually writing one. Plus the queries generated aren’t always optimized.
- very small list of 3rd party/community created components/libraries. This is probably due to the fact that Cake doesn’t follow the Open Source development model - more closed
- Cake’s slogan of convention over configuration is somewhat BS. In reality, you end up hard coding config stuff in controller and model

This is just stuff off the top of my head. Cake does make simple apps easy. This is where you get hooked until you have to do something more real world.

I did work with CI early on but dropped it because it’s closed development was IMHO worst than Cake’s. I would love to see Kohana grow and succeed! Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have a large user group just yet.

I’m learning symfony. I figured if it’s good enough for Yahoo’s Answers than it’s good enough for me. All the command line stuff gets time to get use to but. YAML rules. A big bonus of symfony is you don’t have to use their ORM. It’s also slow. Anyway, community is more helpful than Cake’s

By: devel

devel — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:55:25 +0000

also check out kohana framework. originally based on codeigniter…but now with the 2.0 version completely rewritten exclusively for php5. http://kohanaphp.com

By: Fred Wu

Fred Wu — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:30:50 +0000

PHP has its problems, so does Ruby. They are just tools. It’s like some people prefer Windows, some prefer OS X and others prefer Linux. By the end of the day, it is what offers *you* the most productive outcome that matters. Trashing PHP is not here nor there. :/

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. I love CodeIgniter, been using it since version 1.3.

By: Toby Hede

Toby Hede — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:41:37 +0000

I have to start doing that. I’ve spent the afternoon working on a VB application.

But VB == still better than PHP.

By: Shanti Braford

Shanti Braford — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 06:38:27 +0000

I feel your pain.

I deal with this by not taking any PHP work from potential clients!

But I’m sure I turn away a very large amount of work by being that persnickity.

By: Fijiaaron

Fijiaaron — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:04:17 +0000

I think CodeIgniter’s the best of the PHP frameworks I’ve tried too. With maybe Symfony second. I like CodeIgniter’s simplicity and documentation. Though I tend to want something heavier weight — I really like pushing entities into the model, but the ability to take it or leave it is what I like.

It’s “not opinionated” as you said, and that’s what I think wins me over, even though, e.g., Cake has more of what I want, I don’t want it served with Cake.

By: Toby Hede

Toby Hede — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:44:37 +0000

Robert: Exactly right … CakePHP tries to pretend it’s Rails but PHP isn’t Ruby.
You can however, make very complex applications using Hibernate and ActiveRecord … Hiberntate is the “industry standard” in the Java world and used on *massive* projects.

CodeIgniter’s biggest benefit is its determination to stay out of your way …

By: ktolis

ktolis — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:10:57 +0000

How about Symfony?

By: Adam Risser

Adam Risser — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:56:24 +0000

Hear Hear! I wouldn’t have minded CakePHP so much if the documentation wasn’t so….nonexistent? CodeIgniter has its own issues, but they are usually easy to work around because CodeIgniter seems to not force a lot of convention down your throat.