Question

We’re going to implement a set of REST web services in PHP. We’ve selected 2 frameworks to do that: Symfony 2 and Silex (micro-framework as a phar archive, based on Symfony2).

For now, there will be only a few services, with a few resources returned as GET, but the set of method will eventually grow and include other rest actions (put/post/delete).

here is the list of pros and cons I’ve got so far for these 2 frameworks

Symfony2

Pros:

• more powerful
• Doctrine ORM
• can debug with XDebug
• config in YML
• more used in the community
• more support
• autocompletion in IDE
• fast

cons:

• Need FOSBundle to do REST (?) (actually, I’d like to know if this is really useful)

Silex

Pros:

• lightweight
• seems easier to create REST urls (?)
• easier to deploy (phar archive)

Cons:

• no Doctrine ORM
• cannot debug (phar archive)
• no autocompletion in IDE
• config must be hardcoded
• may be a bit slower, as it’s in a phar archive ?

Which one do you think is the best?

Thanks

Answer 1

Personally I really like symfony 2, its easy to create REST urls using the annotations syntax, in your controller you put something like

/**
 * @Route("/user/{id}", requirements={"id" = "\d+"}, defaults={"_format"="json"})
 * @Method({"GET"})
 */
 public function getUser($id) {
     ...
 }
 /**
 * @Route("/user", defaults={"_format"="json"})
 * @Method({"PUT"})
 */
 public function putUser() {
     ...
 }