{"id":273,"date":"2016-11-01T00:51:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T00:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/fryan\/?p=273"},"modified":"2017-03-01T17:29:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T17:29:59","slug":"language-framework-popularity-a-look-at-php","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/fryan\/2016\/11\/01\/language-framework-popularity-a-look-at-php\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Framework Popularity: A Look at PHP"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL; DR<\/strong> \u2013 Laravel is the stand out leader, CodeIgniter and Symfony lead the next tier. \u00a0yiiFramework is on an interesting trajectory. Headline Symfony number are misleading as they miss out all of the projects built upon Symfony.<\/p>\n

Framework: \u2018a basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text.\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

We have previously looked at frameworks used with Java<\/a> and JavaScript<\/a>, and as we noted one of the factors which drives the popularity of a language is the availability of frameworks and tools which enhance developer productivity, something which my colleague Stephen O\u2019Grady\u00a0has covered in the past<\/a><\/p>\n

In the bi-annual RedMonk Programming Language Rankings we consistently<\/a> see PHP rating very highly. PHP is a language the generates a classic marmite<\/a> like response when it comes up in conversations. To say that there is quite a high level of dismissiveness of the language among certain communities is somewhat of an understatement. Indeed, this was demonstrated, and quite rightly dismissed<\/a>, at a software architecture conference in London recently. To discount PHP as an important language is not just wrong, it is to fundamentally misunderstand how a huge volume of software is currently being written.<\/p>\n

In many ways PHP has been a victim of its own success. The number of outdated and poorly written articles and tutorials that are available online is staggering, and unfortunately for PHP these old articles are the first port of a call for many beginners. A large amount of dismissiveness towards PHP is due to this unfortunate legacy. Community projects such as Josh Lockhart\u2019s PHP The Right Way<\/a> are helping to address this.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of this analysis we looked at the frameworks we hear mentioned most frequently in our conversations that touch on PHP. This is by no means a fully exhaustive list, but it does capture the most popular frameworks that we hear about being used with PHP.<\/p>\n

If there is a framework you feel we should be looking at, please do add a comment below or let me know on twitter<\/p>\n

Framework Popularity<\/h2>\n

We first looked across twenty-two frameworks that have been mentioned to us in conversations (the full list is at the end of this piece). As you can observe this is a crowded space, but four major groupings emerge.<\/p>\n

\"php-fw-stars-20161031\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"php-fw-commits-20161031\"<\/a> \"php-fw-issues-20161031\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From these we focused our analysis on the following frameworks with over five thousand stars on github.<\/p>\n