CakePHP Quick Start Guide for Experts

I’ve started a new project and, to my disappointment, the hosting environment won’t support Ruby. It is the client’s own facility, so using another provider is not an option.

I looked at the web frameworks page at Wikipedia and picked out six for a deeper look: Akelos, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Kohana, Symfony and Zend. My major requirements were:

• PHP (<= 5.1)
• MVC
• ORM
• Test framework
• Some support for database migration
• Caching
• Maturity: stable code and a healthy community

In a nutshell, something approximating Rails. I settled on CakePHP. Much of what makes Rails great can be traced directly back to Ruby, and you can’t approach that level of expressiveness in PHP, so an approximation is the best we can do.

Coming up to speed on a new framework is always a stop-and-go affair, but Matt Curry’s Super Awesome Advanced CakePHP Tips (free PDF e-book) is terrific. Highly recommended if you already know what you’re doing and just need answers to “how do I… in CakePHP?”