Yii vs. Zend – Why Use One of These for Your Web Development

PHP has a large footprint in the web development community. With over 80% of all existing websites running on PHP code, we can confidently say that PHP has become a ubiquitous phenomenon in web development.

A major reason for many developers choosing PHP is its wide range of developmental frameworks.

PHP frameworks enable you to build websites and apps of all sizes and complexity levels without having to start from scratch.

So, the massive growth of PHP-based web development can be rightly attributed to these excellent frameworks.

But, then again, the real question is which PHP framework is best suited for your needs.

While choosing the best framework can be subjective and based on your particular needs, there are few qualities that make a framework the best choice in many cases.

Yii and Zend are two frameworks with such amazing features and capabilities.

So, here is a brief overview of both these frameworks to help you decide which is the best one for your MVC development project.

Yii

Yii has been a popular choice among developers to develop large-scale and secured applications.

It was launched in 2008 and is one of the oldest PHP frameworks still going strong. Yii 2.0 is the latest version available.

This framework is suitable for developing secure applications with complex workflows. It is also great for developing CRM and CMS applications.

Yii is a high-performance, component-based PHP framework that is designed to make your MVC development fast and easy. It is flexible and includes a variety of features, including:

• Integration with jQuery,
• Gii module – a built-in code generator, and
• Active record – the ability to access databases as either Data Access Objects or as Active Records.

It has many other attractive features as well, such as caching, role-based access control, scaffolding, testing and authentication.

In addition, Yii has an active community that can help you with easy maintenance and support. The documentation of its code library is also good.

Cons

• A major downside, as reported by many beginners, is that it can be a little difficult to get started with Yii.
• Yii relies heavily on static methods and this may cause code complexities.
• Managing code for large platforms and sites can be difficult and you have to be extra careful in using Yii in such cases.

Zend

Zend has been a constant favourite for many developers and has been upgraded into the Zend 2.0 version. Many corporations, such as BBC, BNP Paribas and Cisco WebEx, use Zend in their projects.

Some of the great features of Zend 2.0 are:

• Modular approach – enables reusability and better flexibility,
• Service manager – a layer that returns objects as requested to be used in your own factories,
• Event manager – lets you attach and detach even listeners, handlers, trigger events and interrupt execution, and
• PHP composer – maintains the project libraries and version management.

Zend can also be used on a piecemeal basis: Certain components of Zend can be used in a Yii-based web application.

It follows a use-at-will architecture and has minimal interdependencies among its components.

It further supports multiple database systems and email delivery systems.

This framework gives you complete control over every feature and customisations are very easy. When the project involved is simple, development using Zend can be very fast.

However, for larger projects, using Zend tends to take longer.

Cons

Zend has a reputation for being hard to learn. But, in case of documentation, Yii seems to have better credits. The configuration options are also complex.

Let us take a closer look at the specialties of each framework to better understand them.

So which one are you going to pick? Do you have any questions or points to add here? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!