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I have written a comparison of three PHP frameworks: CodeIgniter, Yii and CakePHP.

http://daniel.carrera.bz/2009/01/comparison-of-php-frameworks-part-i/

It is positive of CodeIgniter. This comparison is the result of several weeks of study of all three frameworks, starting from almost no initial knowledge.

Are you dissatisfied with most comparisons because they are too superficial? Me too. So I tried to make a positive contribution by writing a review/comparison that is thorough, balanced and clearly written. No framework is the absolute winner, but CodeIgniter did very well.

It took a lot of work to write this. Now I hope that new users can find it, and that it is useful.

wow. this is awesome work DanielC! very thorough and thoughtful.

thank you for posting.

i guess (based on your slight preference for Yii) we’ll see you ‘round the Yii forums with wiredesignz? 😉

Hey DanielC,

Loved the article, great work! One of the best (probably the best) I’ve read. And I’m very much looking forward to part II. You won’t change my mind anymore, I’m too invested in CI by now, but it’s always good to know what other frameworks might be better at and what weaknesses are to be considered.

Especially the section on security was very informative! But I was wondering about the “Cookie hijacking attacks” part: you say CI doesn’t offer any means against this but you can switch on cookie encryption, matching session ID against the DB and matching IP/User-agent against the DB. Don’t those protect against cookie hijacking? I might misunderstand what cookie hijacking means, but I thought this was it and these do protected against cookie hijacks… (User Guide on Sessions, settings for this are explained at the bottom of the page)

(I understand cookie hijacking to mean stealing information from them and possibly re-using a cookie while changing some of the settings in it)

This was really a good link.
Enjoyed reading it..

keep up the good work

Overall I thought thought that was a good review. However as a CakePHP user (Who is considering switching.) I must say I feel your focus on flexibility is a tad much. While I admit it can seem limiting, Convention is I feel almost a requirement with programming of all sorts. It makes both learning, teaching and working easier 99.9% of the time. Granted I will give you the point that CakePHP requiring a database is a tad overkill. However (While I haven’t done it myself) I have read that you can easily disable that.

The problem you ran into with the theme was Scaffolding. Poorly documented I admit but nothing a quick google wouldn’t help you with. As for the password hashes, The reason you couldn’t add your own system is because you would have to set the password salt to blank. After that you could hash your own passwords however you wanted.

But again, Besides my nitpicking overall I think you did a fine job. 😊