Web-apps : to framework or not to framework?

Question

I know PHP and am just beginning with MySql (but plan to use ODBC). I don't need any books explaining that.

I am probably qualified to develop a simple web site, but aim at taking on quite ambitious apps. I imagine that almost all web apps have some commonality like security, scalability, etc (I have absolutely no idea how to distribute a data base or an app over server servers, for instance).

Since I can't foresee the exact nature of the applications which I might develop (other than that PHP & ODBC will be involved), is there any point in getting married to a framework, or should I just reinvent the wheel and personalize it to make it my own framework.

If an existing framework, then which one? The only help I can give is that I am not likely to do websites, portals, shoppings sites, etc, probably leaning more to asset tracking and data mining.

Answer 1

Using a framework saves you a ton of time and helps you to organise your app mroe logically.

If the app is small then frameworks like CodeIgniter or Kohana are ideal.

If you are building a bigger app that needs to scale the Symfony or possiby Zend are the ones to look at.

If you were to start your app in Symfony you would instanly get:

• url rewriting using routes
• a form framework for handling everything to do with your web forms
• internationalisation and localisation
• emailing
• caching
• admin area generator, to help you add data quickly
• unit testing framework

Plus the whole framework is extendable and custmisable to suit your needs.

Starting without a framework you'd have to write all of this yourself. Or integrate several disparate open source modules.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Good frameworks give you a ready solution to common problems. Reinventing solutions for yourself probably will be excessive work. As a learning exercise coming up with stuff for yourslef has some value. To get a real job done efficiently use a framework.

This does assume that good frameworks exist in your world ...

Answer 3

I currently am developing in the PHP framework Kohana (version 3). There is also a way to make models (for the (H)MVC pattern) very quickly using ORM. For more information look at this: http://kohanaframework.org/guide/tutorials.orm and take a look at http://kohanaframework.org/guide/api and http://kohanaframework.org/download