Symfony Or Zend Framework – Which One Is Better To Go For?

By Author: Brain Vire
Total Articles: 15
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In the recent years, PHP frameworks have gained immense popularity across the world. When we talk about PHP frameworks, the first names that will come into your mind would be “Symfony” & “Zend Framework”. Of course, they both are one of the most popular and extensively used PHP frameworks till date.

Of course, both Symfony and Zend frameworks are capable enough to help businesses get complicated applications developed smoothly and effectively. This is the reason why people across the world prefer Symfony development services or Zend framework to get robust and powerful online applications on the go.

While the Zend framework provides a wide range of functions and enhanced interface to the challenging tasks that developers are facing these days, Symfony is also gearing up its market share with the growing popularity of Symfony development services. However, the major feature of Zend framework is that you have to choose libraries needed for the application on your own, which eliminates the need of a sole specific approach to carry out ...
... the things.

Apart from all these, there are a lot of features that you will find common in both of these frameworks, such as they both are PHP5 native, heavily object-oriented and both of them apply the same controller model. Well, but what is the major difference between both of these frameworks and which one is more better than the other one? Let’s find it out.

• Learning Curve

When it comes to learning, Symfony wins the battle against Zend framework. It is very easy for the newbie developers to get into Symfony development as there are a lot of guides provided by both communities and authors. On the other hand, Zend framework doesn’t have such support and its documentation is also created keeping in mind the skilled professionals. So, it would be quite difficult for a beginner to start creating applications using the Zend framework.

• Unit testing

For unit testing, Symfony has an integrated support for it. On the other hand, Zend framework doesn’t have integrated support for it, but each and every component of the framework needs unit testing.

• Templating

When we talk about templating capabilities of the Zend framework, we can’t say it is mature enough as compared to the one offered by the Symfony framework. Templating capabilities in Symfony framework are quite impressive with the help of caching for immediate delivery of the content. With the help of layout scripts developers can easily customize the templates in a much easier way in Symfony.

• Database modules

While the Zend framework allows developers to use only database manager that is ActiveRecord model, Symfony empower developers to use almost any kind of database manager with ease.

• Plugins

If you will notice, you will find that in the wiki community of extension extensive plugins belong to Symfony framework. On the other hand, Zend framework doesn’t have any of them.

From the above discussion it is quite clear that Symfony is a winner when it comes to templating, plugins, database modules and easy learning curve. So, what you are going to choose? Share your views in the comments..!