Wednesday, 12 August 2015

Review of PHP CodeIgniter Framework

PHP development
The new era web service applications are designed on a modern platform for better accessibility and code integration: It is known as Model- View- Design pattern or simply MVC. The same, we can find from PHP CodeIgniter platform. As the name suggests, there are 3 components and they are separated from each other by a virtual yet effective screen. It keeps the View i.e. the user interface absolutely isolated from the core logic. The View and the logic are controlled by an intermediate Controller. The Model consist of the core logic, database and rules of the application and it provides the relevant contents to the View i.e. Browser after the instruction of the Controller. By this process, the MVC architecture helps in keeping every aspect of the application safe and secured and most importantly in a systematic manner. Let’s have a glance over the CodeIgniter framework”. 

Complete documentation for the user: Since, CodeIgniter is a framework developed on the MVC architecture; there are many components, libraries and functions available inside. In fact, the Model designs itself cumbersome. So, it becomes difficult for a developer to start writing code on the platform without any prior knowledge or in-depth knowledge of its components. To make the things easier CodeIgniter provides a complete documentation for all its components and features. As a smart web developer, you should go through each and every page of the documentation so as to make the best use of the framework. The documentation works like a user guide and hence it is extremely useful from the developer’s point of view. It has various indexes like MVC basics, Routing basics, Form validation, Performance improvement etc and these are extremely important in developing an enterprise standard web solution. It is always recommended to learn the documentation along with a corporate training for improved productivity of the developer. 

Installation will not take more time or effort: CodeIgniter is a web application framework developed in PHP and enables PHP web developers in building reliable yet faster web solutions without much hassle. To getting started with CodeIgniter, one needs to install the framework on the server. For the same, you need to download the software and unzip the package from internet. Now you have to upload all the folders and files to the server on which you are suppose to work on. You can also use encryption or sessions by setting encryption key. The process is very simple and it doesn’t require any hard effort from the developer. Once you configure CodeIgniter you can start coding from the index.php page. 

Advanced features have made it to sustain in the industry for years: There are many advanced and effective features that CodeIgniter possesses for designing high quality web applications. The most important feature of CodeIgniter is its MVC Architecture, which is extremely helpful in creating complex web applications in less time and with more accuracy. CodeIgniter is extremely light weight and hence it can help you in building light weight web applications that will definitely load faster on the browser especially when we are considering modern browsers for smart phones and tablets etc. CodeIgniter has an inbuilt form and data validation feature that eliminates the unnecessary effort that is being given by the developer in other platforms. It has FTP class and File Uploading class for manipulation of files in the application server. The enhanced full page caching features can definitely help in improving the performance of the application and hence user experience. It has other features like Active Record Database Support, Session Management, Error logging and Calendaring class etc. 

SEO with CodeIgniter: Search engine optimisation is the most important feature of any web framework and it is now a must for every framework. Just like other PHP frameworks i.e., WordPress, Joomla etc, CodeIgniter also possess a search engine optimisation tool to make the PHP website well visible on Google. The search engine optimisation process starts with the title of the page and the search engine friendly URL. CodeIgniter has support for creating search engine friendly URLs along with other SEO features like key word density calculation, URL routing and SEO analysis etc. The URL routing or rewriting technique helps in improving page ranking in the search engine for better visibility of your website. 

Ease of Use for CI developers: A framework can’t sustain for a decade in the industry without any potential. CodeIgniter has already proved its potential with awesome features and of course easy to use developer interface. The developer interface of CodeIgniter is extremely easy to understand i.e. a beginner can start coding on the platform without much hassle. Different components of the framework can easily be integrated to the application for enhanced productivity. It has many templates available for the CodeIgniter developer so that he can start developing web pages easily with the templates that are already made available for the developers. 

Migration process is not a headache for you: Migration is something used for the improvement of your application with more optimised classes and data query. In web application development process it is extremely important for any business to be up to date with time in order to provide better customer support for your service or product. In CodeIgniter, the developer is allowed to manage his database schema for different environments and platform. The developer needn’t to manually run the MySQL queries for this process rather it can be done from within the platform itself. The best part is that it also provides scope for the CodeIgniter developer to reverse or role back of the migration process if found any issues during the migration. With CodeIgniter you can track all the versions of your database changes just like versioning of files as we use git i.e., we can go back or forward easily to a different DB version as per our requirement and as when we need it. 

Flexibility and customization is really a wonderful feature: A framework is usually having some optional features that can be achieved for your application with the integration of plug-ins, themes etc. CodeIgniter developers are allowed to integrate various open source plug-ins developed in PHP or jQuery to make the website more feature loaded and attractive. A PHP developer can customise his web application through different plug-ins and components for enhanced user experience. On the other hand, it also helps in extending the functionality of the application without any high effort due to availability of source code from CodeIgniter expert community. 

Nevertheless to say, CodeIgniter has an amazing track record of more than a decade and how this is possible we can easily guess from above discussions. 

At Mindfire Solutions, we have dedicated developer teams for almost all major PHP Frameworks. We have been providing expert PHP development services to our clients for more than 10 years now and have executed over 100 projects in various PHP and PHP Frameworks. Please feel free to contact us if you have any custom application development requirement, our senior CakePHP, zend, CodeIgniter, Symfony developers will love to assist you in your requirement.

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