Sealan Cronin

Recently, I’ve been using CodeIgniter, a PHP web application framework to build a large scale website. Compared to the Zend Framework, it’s certainly more lean and simpler to configure and use. To install, you just download and unzip the package into your web root, change a few things (e.g. database settings) then your off and running. With index.php as your front controller, your application has a simple and loose implementation of MVC. You can use an htaccess to remove index.php from routes for much cleaner URLs. After a request is routed to a controller, developers have the flexibility to do whatever they want; forward views, instantiate models or make a mangled mess of everything.

Your code is on fire!

In addition, the framework contains a well documented collection of core libraries. These contain lots of useful functionality typically desired from modern web applications, such sanitizing input and manipulating strings. Whilst most of these classes are useful, some just encapsulate existing PHP functions with little enhancement. The absence of layouts is also a bit of shame, which would be a great addition to the framework. However, there is a good community of developers and quality documentation, which has led to plenty of custom built libraries and plugins. So, there is much opportunity to extend CodeIgniter to your own fancy.

I think CodeIgniter would be well suited to a small development team, who are like minded and carefully plan development. Given its flexibility, it might be a haphazard framework to use with larger teams that demand a consistent structure. It may also be a good first step for existing PHP applications, built without a framework, to move towards using one whilst retaining some legacy code. Whilst it may boast to be one of the leanest and high performing frameworks out there, I would probably recommend Zend over CodeIgniter for enterprise development simply because of its support and use of best practices. It’s still fun to use though.