What is CodeIgniter?

Posted:
09/01/2013

Comments: 0

CodeIgniter is a powerful and open framework for PHP development. By using it, it is possible to speed up the creation of applications, because it includes a complete library of functions that can be easily reused. Besides, due to the fact that it is a MVC framework, it has a well defined structure that makes the developer’s life easier.

Characteristics

One of the main characteristics of CodeIgniter is the fact that it is a MVC framework. This means Model-View-Controller. The framework was structured in a way that the application is separated in models, views and controllers. Models are responsible for interacting with the database. Controllers have the logic to interact with the user. And the views are the pages. This feature makes easy for any experienced developer to understand other application developed using CodeIgniter quickly.

Its simplicity and small footprint are also important factors. It is powerful and allows the development of any kind of application, but the framework is also simple and light. So it is very easy to learn.

Community

CodeIgniter, as well as other frameworks and libraries in PHP, is an open source solution. Anyone can download it and use it for their own projects. As it was released in 2006 (a long time for a software) it already has a big portion of the market and a big community of developers. Which makes it easy to find information and solutions online.

Examples

Here are a few projects created using CodeIgniter:

http://www.showthatyouelp.com/
http://www.attcenter.com/
http://orotoro.com/
http://www.sprintcenter.com/
http://www.gamestack.net/

How to chose a framework

There are many other frameworks for PHP in the market. Here are a few:

CakePHP: one of the oldest, has a lot of tutorials and information online, but it’s not very flexible.
Zend: one of the most complex ones, being used for enterprise scale applications.
Kohana: originated from CodeIgniter, it was created to work with the latest versions of PHP, using the latest features. Because it is newer, it doesn’t have such a big community.
Laravel: developed by former CodeIgniter developers, it was also created to work with the latest versions of PHP. It’s new and has been very well received by PHP developers, but it still doesn’t have such a big community and so many projects developed.

When you chose a framework, the first thing to consider is the knowledge you and your resources have. If you have someone that already works with a framework, that helps. Even if that’s the case, the learning curve of these frameworks is not so high, and CodeIgniter is considered one of the easiest to learn.

If you need to develop something in enterprise scale, for big corporations, Zend is a good choice. It’s more complex, but also more complete. If you want the latest PHP features, Laravel is the way to go. But remember that when you choose a newer framework, that’s not widely used, you can face difficulties.