Motivations for Flourish

Before work on Flourish began, a good deal of time was spent trying to find a PHP framework or library that accomplished the following:

• Does not require use of MVC, especially the Front Controller variation
• Has good documentation that allows finding what you want with minimal effort
• Handles OS/server portability well, requiring a minimum of non-standard PHP extensions
• Encourages security best-practices and provides tools and examples to secure applications
• Provides an easy to use and consistent API so that end-user code doesn't have to handle as many edge cases
• Does not require manual definition of ORM model schemas or relationships
• Is not released in long monolithic release cycles
• Doesnt require using the developers favorite revision control software (SVN, CVS, GIT, Bazaar, etc) to get the latest code
• Allows removing extraneous code or downloading only what you want
• Provides a simplified and consistent interface to common PHP usage patterns
• Does not simply try to emulate another framework from another language
• Is released under a minimally invasive open source license, to allow for inclusion in closed source code

Research Results

Some of the frameworks and libraries that were investigated include:

PEAR

• Homepage: http://pear.php.net
• License: various
• Overview: A large collection of disjoint classes from many different maintainers, many have poor documentation and a confusing APIs

Propel

• Homepage: http://propel.phpdb.org
• License: LGPL
• Overview: Apaches Torque Java ORM ported to PHP, XML schema definition

Doctrine

• Homepage: http://phpdoctrine.org
• License: LGPL
• Overview: A very large and complicated ORM with its own abstraction of SQL

Code Igniter

• Homepage: http://codeigniter.com
• License: BSD-ish
• Overview: An MVC framework for PHP4/5

Kohana

• Homepage: http://kohanaphp.com
• License: BSD
• Overview: Originally a fork of Code Igniter, now rebuilt in PHP5. Still strict MVC, decent documentation.

Seagull

• Homepage: http://seagullproject.org
• License: BSD
• Overview: A long-lived and somewhat confusing MVC framework with PHP4/5 support

Symfony

• Homepage: http://www.symfony-project.org
• License: MIT
• Overview: An "Enterprise" PHP5 MVC frameworkone of the slowest available

CakePHP

• Homepage: http://cakephp.org
• License: MIT
• Overview: PHP4/5 MVC framework with lots of communityone of the slowest available

SolarPHP

• Homepage: http://solarphp.com
• License: BSD
• Overview: A huge library/framework with a long release cycle, still in alpha

Zend Framework

• Homepage: http://framework.zend.com
• License: BSD
• Overview: The definition of "Enterprise" with over 1500 source files

Other PHP Frameworks/Libraries

The following are some other (mostly smaller) frameworks and libraries that were not fully reviewed.

• http://www.atomikframework.com/
• http://www.yiiframework.com/
• http://www.qadram.com/vcl4php/
• http://adventure-php-framework.org/Page/001-Home
• http://phocoa.com/
• http://cognifty.com/
• http://www.qcodo.com/
• http://okapi.liip.ch/
• http://www.akelos.org/
• http://code.google.com/p/phaux/
• http://orchid.phpxperts.net/
• http://www.pradosoft.com/
• http://ez.no/ezcomponents
• http://www.fusebox.org/
• http://www.phpontrax.com/
• http://qphp.net/
• http://www.zoopframework.com/
• http://www.stubbles.net/
• http://www.stratosframework.com/