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

Question

6

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68

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Jun 11, 2018

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 6 OptionsWhy?

6 Options Considered	Price	Default Template Engine	PHP version
91 Slim	-	–	–
87 Laravel	-	Blade	5.6.4+
82 Lumen	-	–	–
-- Silex	-	–	–
-- Fat-Free Framework	-	custom	5.4+

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5 Other Options Considered

68 Community Recommendations

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AffableAmphictyonis

Contributor for a month

1

Total
Recs.

0

Total
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Slim

Recommended a month ago

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Martis

Contributor for 2 months

6

Total
Recs.

100

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Slim

Recommended a month ago

Pro

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

Pro

REST based

ArticulateVeles

Contributor for 4 months

1

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0

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Slim

Recommended 4 months ago

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PatientChronos

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Slim

Recommended 4 months ago

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BELGASMI

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Slim

Recommended 4 months ago

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PoisedHyperion

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Slim

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GenerousPhobetor

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Slim

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ArtisticPapsukkal

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Slim

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Bryan

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Slim

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score 22 · Answer 1

Slim

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

score 17 · Answer 2

Laravel

Default Template Engine:Blade

score 17 · Answer 3

Lumen

Top Pro

Most Performant PHP micro-Framework

Lumen is benchmarked at 100/rps (Requests Per Second) faster than Slim v3, which used to be considered the fastest and most performant micro-Framework to date with the ability to handle 1800/rps. (1900/rps vs 1800/rps respectively). See More

Top Con

Made to work alongside Laravel

Lumen as a framework is at it's full potential when used alongside it's older brother. Lumen was created to be used for microservices alongside Laravel, which is used for more user-facing applications. If a project is already using another framework other than Laravel, it would be better to use another microframework for microservices instead of Lumen. See More

Top Pro

Easily upgradable to Laravel

Since it's basically just a minimal version of Laravel, it can be upgraded to a full Laravel app if the need arises. No need for code changes, just import the code to a new Laravel install. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 4

Silex

Top Con

Documentation is not very extensive

The documentation for this framework is average, it's helpful mostly. But it is not extensive enough to cover everything in detail unfortunately. See More

Top Pro

Built on top of Symfony components

The thing that makes Silex stand out from other PHP microframeworks is the fact that it's built using some of Symfony2's components. Making it quite powerful but still lightweight enough to be considered a true microframework. See More

Top Con

Slow performance rendering it difficult to scale

Silex is only able to perform half the number of requests per second as Lumen. See More

Top Pro

Simple and elegant DI container

Based on Pimple, Silex has a simple Dependency Injection container that consists of just one file and one class. See More

Top Pro

Extensible

By using Pimple, the Silex application extends the Pimple class, which in turn is nothing more than an implementation of the ArrayAccess interface that has been a part of PHP since version 5.0. This makes it possible to use an instance of the Application class as if it were an array. Like so: $app = new Silex\Application(); $app['config'] = new Config($config_path); This gives developers a great deal of flexibility when injecting dependencies and when testing. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 5

Fat-Free Framework

Top Pro

Highly modular

Virtually everything is modular. You can choose which modules and libraries to include and to keep the framework as lightweight as possible. See More

Top Con

Default ORM doesn't support joins

The default ORM for this framework is missing some features such as joins. But it's important to keep in mind that it's a small plugin, only 23KB in size which still can be replaced with a larger ORM if needed. An alternative the drop in f3-cortex ORM which is popular, and supported by the community, which supports Joins and much more. See More

Top Pro

No canned coding/directory structure

Freedom to structure your projects' directories and codes as you wish. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight without losing functionality

The framework is very lightweight and fast. Even though it's pretty light, it still does not lose a lot of functionality. See More

Specs

Default Template Engine:custom

PHP version:5.4+

See All

score 1 · Answer 6

LaunchGator

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

The Best 1 of 6 OptionsWhy?

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

Lumen

Most Performant PHP micro-Framework

Made to work alongside Laravel

Easily upgradable to Laravel

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

Highly modular

Default ORM doesn't support joins

No canned coding/directory structure

Lightweight without losing functionality

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68 Community Recommendations

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