What is CakePHP Framework and Why You Should Use It

CakePHP is an open source PhP framework for developing web applications. CakePHP lets you build these applications much faster and also makes your task simpler by minimizing the requirement of building your application from scratch.

The CakePHP website describes itself as:

“CakePHP makes building web applications simpler, faster, while requiring less code. A modern PHP 7 framework offering a flexible database access layer and a powerful scaffolding system that makes building both small and complex systems simpler, easier and, of course, tastier. Build fast, grow solid with CakePHP.”

Why Use CakePHP?

Apart from being convenient and flexible, there’s more to CakePHP which makes it a preferred PhP development framework for many. If you are also among the indecisive lot who can’t decide if you should go with CakePHP web application development, here are a few reasons why you should.

MVC architecture

CakePHP follows MVC or ‘Model View Controller’ as its software design pattern. The MVC pattern divides your application into three major components. Each component is developed to handle different aspects. The ‘Model’ is designed to support all data related logic that you work with. With model class, you can insert, update, delete or read the data from the database. The second tier i.e. ‘View’ supports data rendering on the screen. It is used for all the UI logic related to the application.

The ‘Controller’ processes and reacts to actions and can alter data before it interacts with the model (database). Basically, it acts as an interface between Model and View components. The pattern makes it easier to split logic and presentation which comes handy for large applications and sites.

Convenient Extensions

If you are using CakePHP, you can easily extend your project with components, behaviors, and plug-ins. It allows you to create parts of the reusable code which becomes useful for multiple projects. By expanding the functionality using these components, behaviors, and plug-ins, you can create a generalized library instead of Cake’s extending core libraries. This library can be shared between different models, controllers, and views and can be used in other projects as well. Moreover, there are a lot of plugins, helpers, and components available for CakePHP users which are developed by well defined conventions of CakePHP so you don’t have to write everything from the scratch.

Easy configuration

It’s one of the most important reasons why majority of CakePHP users selected it as their web framework. With CakePHP, you just have to manage the database connections settings. Other than that, there isn’t any part of codes or configuration for which you need to state the location of the library or the specific url of the website. All of these functions are automated in CakePHP, making your work easier and swifter to a significant level.

Object Relational Mapping

Object relational mapping is a programming technique to facilitate data conversion between incompatible type systems in databases and object-oriented programming languages. That is, every table is represented from a class. These classes are responsible for the management of whatever happens with your data, its validity, interactions, and evolution of the information workflow in your domain of work. The built-in ORM of CakePHP specializes in relational databases and can be extended further to support substitute data sources. CakePHP aims at creating a hybrid implementation to create a fast and easy to use ORM.

CRUD scaffolding

CRUD is taken from the main activities involved in most the web applications namely Create, Read, Update, and Delete. It’s useful as it gives you a preliminary view of your application in just a single line of code.The bake.php core library has now changed /console/cake which makes it very easy to modify things as per the specific requirements of your application. The feature might be available in others as well but with CakePHP, it saves a lot of time.

Compatibility with different versions of PhP

Though some developers choose to believe that CakePHP works only for PhP4, it’s not true. CakePHP can be used both in PhP4 and PhP5. The portability hence providing another reason to go for it.

Testing features

Though it might not come handy to many, it’s an important feature for developers building large applications. CakePHP comes along the ability to create test to check your application and any criticality attached to it. There are two types of tests: core and custom. Both can be built easily. It’s useful for large applications where you might think of any part to be critical and the performance need regular checks.

And many more reasons…

CakePHP is undeniably one of the most popular frameworks for PhP development. It reduces the development costs to a considerable level and can rapidly build applications using code generation and other scaffolding features. There is no complicated configuration required, just setup your database and you are good to go! Moreover, most of the required features are built-in into the framework including translations, database access, caching, validation, authentication, and others. If you need more reasons, you should know that it works from any website directory and comes along with an active and effective community as well. To know more about what CakePHP can do for you, check out the CakePHP development services we offer.