What are the best PHP frameworks for building a RESTful API?

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score 24 · Accepted Answer

Slim

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Top Pro

REST based

REST fans will love the REST based architecture. See More

Top Con

Too minimal

While it's true that Slim is a microframework, it's still too minimal. When used for throwaway projects or simple prototypes, it's perfect. But in the long run, it becomes less and less useful and you end up in implementing a fully custom framework in trying to tackle all the missing features. So in the end, if the project would go further than a prototyping stage it would be easier to just implement another microframework that has those missing features out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Middleware for executing code at different points in its life-cycle

Slim supports middleware for executing functions at different points in time during the application's lifecycle. See More

Top Con

Lack of learning resources for Slim 3

There are very few tutorials and learning resources for Slim 3. See More

Top Pro

Useful classes

Contains classes for managing requests, responses, cookies, logging, views, HTTP caching, and more. See More

Top Pro

Low learning curve

You can literally have your first application up in less than an hour. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to perform CRUD operations

Top Pro

Great scalability

Install only the packages you need, and even build large applications around this super clean architecture. No stacks of libraries you don't need and no verbose configuration files and setup routines. See More

Top Pro

Supports tie-ins for Rack-like middleware

Rack is an interface used in Ruby frameworks used to group and order modules, which most of the time are Ruby classes, and specify between them. Slim uses a simple concept for it's middleware. By wrapping HTTP requests and responses it unifies the middleware into a single method call. See More

Top Pro

Well organized and thorough documentation

Slim's documentation is well organized and detailed, every concept is thoroughly explained and it is very helpful for both advanced users and beginners. See More

See All

What are the best PHP frameworks for building a RESTful API?

The Best 1 of 6 OptionsWhy?

Slim

My Recommendation for Slim

My Recommendation for Slim

REST based

Too minimal

Middleware for executing code at different points in its life-cycle

Lack of learning resources for Slim 3

Useful classes

Low learning curve

Very easy to perform CRUD operations

Great scalability

Supports tie-ins for Rack-like middleware

Well organized and thorough documentation

5 Other Options Considered

Laravel

My Recommendation for Laravel

My Recommendation for Laravel

Lumen

My Recommendation for Lumen

My Recommendation for Lumen

Most Performant PHP micro-Framework

Made to work alongside Laravel

Easily upgradable to Laravel

Silex

My Recommendation for Silex

My Recommendation for Silex

Documentation is not very extensive

Built on top of Symfony components

Slow performance rendering it difficult to scale

Simple and elegant DI container

Extensible

Fat-Free Framework

My Recommendation for Fat-Free Framework

My Recommendation for Fat-Free Framework

Highly modular

Default ORM doesn't support joins

No canned coding/directory structure

Lightweight without losing functionality

LaunchGator

My Recommendation for LaunchGator

My Recommendation for LaunchGator

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