When comparing Kohana vs Silex, the Slant community recommends Silex for most people. In the question“What are the best PHP frameworks?” Silex is ranked 14th while Kohana is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Silex is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
With no PECL extensions or PEAR libraries to increase it's bloat, Kohana is extremely lightweight and massive libraries are avoided for more consistency and speed.
Pro OOP framework that is extremely DRY
Kohana follows the OOP software paradigm and it strictly enforces the DRY principle, which makes it easier for developers to write clean and maintainable code.
Pro Tools for quick development
Includes tools that help developers to make applications quickly and efficiently. Some of these tools include:
- Translation libraries
- Code profiling
- Form validation
etc...
Pro Open source
Kohana is open source and is released under the BSD license, this means that it can be modified even for commercial purposes.
Pro Low RAM usage
It is as fast as any popular framework, but the RAM usage is really low in comparison.
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.
Pro Open source
Silex is open source and is licensed under the MIT license.
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.
Pro Testable
Silex makes use of Symfony2's HttpKernel which is used to abstract requests and responses. This in turn, makes it very easy to test apps created with the framework.
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.
Cons
Con Poorly documented
Kohana has always been criticized for the poor documentation it has. Some things are not explained with details and some other things are not explained at all.
Con Deprecated PHP Framework
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.