What is the best PHP RESTful API Framework for my project?

A number of articles on websites strive to give directions which RESTful API frameworks should be chosen whereas in fact there is no “one fits all” solutions that suit different purposes or technologies. Another question is whether to go for Model-View-Controller (MVC) or Resource-Method-Representation (RMR) model.

Therefore, herewith a compiled list of some most popular and actively developed PHP REST API frameworks worth consideration and further evaluation on your project basis:

Epiphany

The Epiphany framework is fast, easy, clean and RESTful. The framework does not do a lot of magic under the hood. It is, by design, very simple and very powerful.

The documentation provides a few conventions that we believe lead to well written code but you’re free to use any style you’d like. The framework never dictates how you should write or structure your application.

https://github.com/jmathai/epiphany

Fat Free

A powerful yet easy-to-use PHP micro-framework designed to help you build dynamic and robust web applications – fast!

Super lightweight code base with just ~55kb

Full-featured toolkit

Easy to learn, use and extend

Fast and clean template engine

Unit testing toolkit

Database-managed sessions

Markdown-to-HTML converter

Atom/RSS feed reader

Image processor

Geodata handler

On-the-fly Javascript/CSS compressor

OpenID (consumer)

Custom logger

Basket/Shopping cart

Pingback server/consumer

Unicode-aware string functions

SMTP over SSL/TLS

Tools for communicating with other servers

Data Validation

and more Plugins from the F3-Community

http://fatfreeframework.com

Flight

Flight is a fast, simple, extensible framework for PHP. Flight enables you to quickly and easily build RESTful web applications.

http://flightphp.com

Frapi

Frapi is a high-level PHP REST API framework that powers web apps, mobiles services and legacy systems, enabling a focus on business logic and not the presentation layer.

FRAPI handles multiple media types, response codes and generating API documentation. It was originally built by echolibre to support the needs of their client’s web apps, and now it’s been open-sourced.

http://getfrapi.com/

Guzzle

Guzzle takes the pain out of sending HTTP requests and the redundancy out of creating web service clients. It’s a framework that includes the tools needed to create a robust web service client, including: Service descriptions for defining the inputs and outputs of an API, resource iterators for traversing paginated resources, batching for sending a large number of requests as efficiently as possible.

All the power of cURL with a simple interface.

Persistent connections and parallel requests.

Streams request and response bodies.

Service descriptions for quickly building clients.

Powered by the Symfony2 EventDispatcher.

Use all of the code or only specific components.

Plugins for caching, logging, OAuth, mocks, and more.

Includes a custom node.js webserver to test your clients.

http://guzzlephp.org

Kohana

An elegant HMVC PHP5 framework that provides a rich set of components for building web applications.

Many common components are included: translation tools, database access, code profiling, encryption, validation, and more.

Use specific libraries and tools: extending existing components and adding new libraries is very easy.

Write commercial applications: uses the BSD license, so you can use and modify it for commercial purposes.

A very fast framework: benchmarking a framework is hard and rarely reflects the real world, but Kohana is very efficient and carefully optimized for real world usage.

Good debugging and profiling tools: simple and effective tools help identify and solve performance issues quickly.

Know what the framework is doing: very well commented code and a simple routing structure makes it easy to understand what is happening.

Work with objects and classes: an OOP framework that is extremely DRY. Everything is built using strict PHP 5 classes and objects.

Write your own code: there are no code generators and endless configuration files, so setting up is fast and easy.

Community support: a very active community forum and IRC channel means that most questions are answered very quickly.

http://kohanaframework.org

Laravel

Laravel is a clean and classy framework for PHP web development. Freeing you from spaghetti code, Laravel helps you create wonderful applications using simple, expressive syntax. Development should be a creative experience that you enjoy, not something that is painful. A well written documentation is a big plus.

Advantages over other frameworks:

Bundles

The Eloquent ORM

Application Logic

Reverse Routing

Restful Controllers

Class Auto Loading

View Composer

The Inversion of Control (IoC) container

Migrations

Unit-Testing

Automatic Pagination

http://laravel.com

Lumen (Laravel based micro-framework)

Lumen is the perfect solution for building Laravel based micro-services and blazing fast APIs. In fact, it’s one of the fastest micro-frameworks available. It has never been easier to write stunningly fast services to support your Laravel applications.

Advantages over other frameworks:

Super-fast

Eloquent features available

http://lumen.laravel.com/

Phalcon

Phalcon is an open source, full stack framework for PHP 5 written as a C-extension, optimized for high performance. You don’t need to learn or use the C language, since the functionality is exposed as PHP classes ready for you to use. Phalcon also is loosely coupled, allowing you to use its objects as glue components based on the needs of your application.

Phalcon is not only about performance, our goal is to make it robust, rich in features and easy to use!

Full MVC applications

Single-Module

Multi-Module

Micro Applications

ORM Transactions Behaviors Relations PHQL Events Validations Hydration Logging Profiling Sharding

ODM for Mongo

Template Engine (Volt)

DI/IOC

Events Management

Encryption

HTTP Request / Response / Cookies

Escaping / Filtering

Forms Builder / Validation

Flash Messages

Cache

Pagination

Annotations

Security

Translations

Assets Management

Universal Auto-Loader

Logging

CLI

http://phalconphp.com/

Recess

You should enjoy PHP development. That’s why Recess exists. Recess is a RESTful PHP framework designed to give you a delightful development experience.

Tools included for every developer

Declarative PHP with annotations

Stays out of your way, not in it

Loosely coupled Model-View-Controller

Create RESTful APIs with Ease

D.R.Y. in philosophy & practice

Caching-oriented architecture

Open source under MIT license

http://www.recessframework.org

Restler

A RESTful API server framework that is written in PHP that aids your mobile / web / desktop applications. A framework, but with a difference – Restler is all here to bend and mend to your needs. Turn your classes and its methods into an easily usable and better Web citizen with Restler.

Writing Server is made easy and light with just 3 PHP files

Simplicity through writing object oriented PHP like

Public methods are automatically mapped to a URL

Customization options and plugin architecture

Supporting for different formats like json, xml, yaml, amf, plist and custom formats

Support for different authentication schemes allowing to add your own auth plugins

http://luracast.com/products/restler

Slim

Slim is a lightweight PHP micro framework for simple yet powerful web applications and APIs.

Powerful router Standard and custom HTTP methods Route parameters with wildcards and conditions Route redirect, halt, and pass Route middleware

Template rendering with custom views

Flash messages

Secure cookies with AES-256 encryption

HTTP caching

Logging with custom log writers

Error handling and debugging

Middleware and hook architecture

Simple configuration

http://www.slimframework.com

Symfony2: FOSRestBundle

This bundle provides various tools to rapidly develop RESTful API’s & applications with Symfony2. Features include:

A View layer to enable output and format agnostic Controllers

A custom route loader to generate url’s following REST conventions

Accept header format negotiation including handling for custom mime types

RESTful decoding of HTTP request body and Accept headers

Exception controller for sending appropriate HTTP status codes

https://github.com/FriendsOfSymfony/FOSRestBundle

Symfony2: Silex

Silex is a PHP microframework for PHP 5.3. It is built on the shoulders of Symfony2 and Pimple and also inspired by sinatra.

A microframework provides the guts for building simple single-file apps. Silex aims to be:

Concise: Silex exposes an intuitive and concise API that is fun to use.

Extensible: Silex has an extension system based around the Pimple micro service-container that makes it even easier to tie in third party libraries.

Testable: Silex uses Symfony2’s HttpKernel which abstracts request and response making it very easy to test apps & the framework itself.

Respects the HTTP specification and encourages its proper use.

http://silex.sensiolabs.org

Tonic

A resource focused PHP RESTful API library where everything useful is a resource located by URLs.

URI annotations

Content negotiation

Method conditions

Mount points

http://peej.github.io/tonic

Wave Framework

A compact PHP micro-framework built loosely on model-view-control (MVC) architecture and factory method design pattern. It is made for web services, websites, info-systems and is built around a native API architecture, caching and smart image and resource management. Wave is a framework that does not include optional libraries with a very small footprint, lightweight and speed in mind.

Wave comes by default with a view controller and a gateway intended for website functionality with clean URLs that also incorporates a front-end JavaScript controller.

Modern API-centric framework for PHP versions 5.3 and above

Secure API requests with hash validation, token and key-based authentication

Dynamically loaded Hierarchical MVC objects through Factory pattern

API returns XML, CSV, JSON, HTML, native PHP and other data formats

Compressed data output with Deflate and Gzip

Input and output data is fully UTF-8

PDO-specific database controller for general-use database connections

Index gateway and Handlers for all types of HTTP requests

Caching system with tagging support for all types of dynamic and static requests

View and URL Controllers that support multiple languages and clean URL’s

Users and permissions control

jQuery JavaScript framework supported

On-demand dynamic image resizer and editor

On-demand resource compression, unifying and minifying

Automatic sitemap.xml and robots.txt generation

Automatically generated API documentation

API wrapper classes that make browser and server to server communication easy

256bit Rijndael encrypted data transmission

API Observers for creating event-specific listeners

Installation-specific MVC class and resource overrides

Custom on-demand session handling

Request limiter that can block HTTP requests under certain conditions

Request logger that can be used for detailed performance grading of HTTP requests

Debugging, backup, update and filesystem maintenance tools

Compatibility script that tests support for server setup

Supports Apache and Nginx servers in Linux and Windows environments

Test Suite for API Testing

Filesystem caching, database cache, APC and Memcache supported

100+ pages of detailed documentation and tutorials

Licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License Version 3

http://www.waveframework.com

Yii

Yii is a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications. It comes with rich features: MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, etc. It can reduce your development time significantly.

http://www.yiiframework.com/

Zend: Zend_Rest_Server

Zend Framework 2 is an open source framework for developing web applications and services using PHP 5.3+. Zend Framework 2 uses 100% object-oriented code and utilises most of the new features of PHP 5.3, namely namespaces, late static binding, lambda functions and closures…

http://framework.zend.com

Other PHP REST API Frameworks

If you wish to add a missing and actively developed framework or make any suggestions on how to improve this page please feel free to leave a comment.