PHP framework of intermediate complexity, in between CodeIgniter and Yii?

Question

Something easy like CI (this means mandatory good, easy, up to date documentation). But also with some more features than CI.

Yii has lots of features, but it is also more complex (and it kind of forces you to have to use lots of it features). That means adding some functionality to your web-app takes three times as long because you have to figure out lots of new small functionalities of Yii.

It's kind of like the CI "gets out of your way" when it needs to, and Yii gets in your way, and if you don't do it its way, it breaks.

Features missing in CI that would be nice to have in this new "intermediate" PHP framework:

• Code generation (crud).
• Authentication.
• Access control.
• Layouts.
• Widgets.
• Easyer / automated pagination (like yii)
• easy uri parameters

Where Yii causes me problems:

It's like for every small task there is some inbuilt functionality (this is good), but, YOU HAVE to use the inbuilt functionality, otherwise bad things happen. (CI gets out of your way, but does it too much, Yii helps a lot, but is butting in too much at times, and it forces you to sift through its documentation so that you discover these functions without which you are not able to accomplish a task that would take four time less, in CI, or in a non framework app).

Is there something in between ?

(ASP.NET MVC could be 'it', but I don't know the language, so the effort to learn it would be greater than learning Yii php framework really well, so I am looking for a PHP Framework)

Answer 1

I am a fan of CakePHP. I feel it has the specs you provided. If you want something more cutting edge you can take a look at Lithium