8 ms·

Launching CakePlate, a boilerplate CakePHP distribution for fast web apps

40 points by garbowza 16y ago

ConceptDog 16y ago
'fast' and 'CakePHP' shouldn't be used in the same sentence. Cake is great for RAD (Rapid Application Development) but the framework itself is massively bloated to almost the same level as a full CMS. You'll get to market faster, but you'll also be planning a rewrite or migration sooner should you enjoy some degree of success.
- garbowza 16y ago
  Could you expand on what you see as the bloat? I find the base distribution of CakePHP to be very lean, and using it on half dozen production projects, I have found no issues with speed, especially with proper use of memcached and media compression.
  - noodle 16y ago
    http://avnetlabs.com/php/php-framework-comparison-benchmarks http://avnetlabs.com/php/php-framework-comparison-benchmarks
    - mattcurry 16y ago
      These benchmarks are from two years ago. The version of Cake used isn't even a stable release (1.2 RC1). Either way 1.3 has replaced 1.2 and is plenty fast for 99.99999% of sites.
      - noodle 16y ago
        fair enough, it was the newest one i could find. this and similar reports from others are the reason i don't use cake, though, and it seems like it would be in their best interest to get some newer information out there. (i made my choices years ago though)
      - karanbhangui 16y ago
        Here's a more recent benchmark: http://symfony-reloaded.org/fast http://symfony-reloaded.org/fast
        jaredstenquist 16y ago
        Odd that they didn't include codeigniter in the test
        tgriesser 16y ago
        Probably because if they had, wouldn't have been the fastest in all tests, or at least not by much.
      - robryan 16y ago
        No to mention that these kind of things are going to be hard to really measure. Each framework is doing such diverse things that each website will get different performance. Also I wouldn't trust a framework maker to do these tests.
      - powertower 16y ago
        Another benchmark source... http://www.yiiframework.com/performance/ http://www.yiiframework.com/performance/ Take with a grain of salt.
        josephmoniz 16y ago
        This benchmark seems to be either out dated or somewhat falsified. I ran the same benchmark on my system and CI out performed Yii ( https://github.com/JosephMoniz/BlueElephant/blob/master/docs/benchmark.md https://github.com/JosephMoniz/BlueElephant/blob/master/docs... ) . The main point though is that with or without caching (APC) CakePHP is the slowest by an order of magnitude. EDIT: yeah, pretty sure the original Yii benchmark is dated as the graph has older versions while the phpmark repo has slighlty newer ones ( http://code.google.com/p/phpmark/source/browse/#svn/trunk http://code.google.com/p/phpmark/source/browse/#svn/trunk )
        mario2027 16y ago
        http://www.phpkode.com http://www.phpkode.com another PHP Framework source
- noodle 16y ago
  agreed. i like codeigniter, which is an order of magnitude or two faster than cake.
  - DanHulton 16y ago
    Consider Kohana, then, which forked off from CodeIgniter years ago and learned from the many mistakes CI made (most notably being a complete inability to adapt), and was designed with PHP 5 in mind from day one.
    - noodle 16y ago
      i considered it in the past, and i might make the switch with all the internal crap going on with CI. but my biggest current project is CI-based and making the conversion would be...tough. plus, their docs suck.
      - GBond 16y ago
        Can you expand on "all the internal crap going on with CI"? I'm building with CI for a project so I'm curious.
        noodle 16y ago
        http://adamgriffiths.co.uk/blog/codeigniter/an_open_letter_to_ellislab http://adamgriffiths.co.uk/blog/codeigniter/an_open_letter_t...
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - tgriesser 16y ago
        It looks like they've been working with the community to try and clear a lot of that stuff up, I really enjoy using CI myself so I've been interested. http://codeigniter.com/news/the_official_codeigniter_community_branch/ http://codeigniter.com/news/the_official_codeigniter_communi...
      - 16y ago
- rynop 16y ago
  I sort of agree with you - if you need twitter type scale, you will need to rewrite. Most frameworks are bloated (not setup to REALLY scale) out of the gate. CakePHP is very flexible, and if used correctly can scale for 99% of workloads. Especially if you leverage some of the php5 only nuances (cake 1.3 has been developed to support php4 and php5). CakePlate can steer you in the right direction - but is not an end all. It helps turn your idea into reality quicker. If your idea twitter scales, then you have cash to throw at the (good) problem. If you give Cake an honest shot, I'm confident you will like it.
- qeorge 16y ago
  I'll bite. I write CakePHP apps for my clients, and I've heard this "cake is slow" meme before. Never been a problem for us, and we've shipped a lot of apps. In almost all cases, the benchmark was done with no caching. I don't know who launches web apps with no caching, but they shouldn't be doing benchmarks. I don't concede that Cake is slow for any meaningful definition, but as a matter of point - I'll trade faster developers for a couple CPU cycles any day of the week.
Griever 16y ago
This is excellent. I've been wanting a similar PHP version of the Html5Boilerplate for some time now. If this saves me as much time as the Html5 version, I'd hop on this in a heartbeat. Seeing more PHP frameworks take this approach would be a great thing, I believe. The RoR commmunity has had this opportunity for quite some time now with Thoughtbots' Suspenders (https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders) template.
mgkimsal 16y ago
Why not some form of user self-registration and admin management tool as well? I see a facebook connect in there, which helps, but a pure cake-based user reg/management system would go a long way towards a faster 'out of the box' experience.
- garbowza 16y ago
  CakePHP comes with that out of the box. You can use the built-in Auth component for registration and user management, and the "Bake" tools will give you the option of creating admin functions, similar to Django's.
  - mgkimsal 16y ago
    Coming with an auth component vs something that provides pre-done models, views and controllers are two different things. Having something provided out of the box with some common defaults that I don't need to configure would be much handier for rapid development.
  - sunny36 16y ago
    I use CakePHP (actually forced to). You can't compare the bake tools with Django admin. The UI of Django admin is usable in fact it's actually nice. I've had lot's of clients who like it. But the generated CSS by the bake tools is non-usable. I usually end up having to write the views for admin when using CakePHP compared to not having to do anything much when using Django.
    - josegonzalez 16y ago
      Unfortunately, bake's default skeleton is indeed pretty lame, but it is possible to replace this with other skeletons (https://github.com/josegonzalez/app_skellington https://github.com/josegonzalez/app_skellington for example, which does auth etc.) And Django Admin? I've since stopped my work on app_skellington in order to work on https://github.com/josegonzalez/cake_admin https://github.com/josegonzalez/cake_admin. It isn't complete, not by a long shot, and php's syntax makes it difficult to use a DSL without going outside the language into something like yaml files, but it will do.
josegonzalez 16y ago
You might want to update your copy to state that you are using the 1.3.6 version of CakePHP, and not the 1.3.3 version. As well, Bitly and Tinyurl would be better served as Behaviors or Datasources, but that's a separate discussion altogether. Good job otherwise.
- garbowza 16y ago
  Good catch! Fixed.
joshfinnie 16y ago
TL:DR Find code here: https://github.com/rynop/CakePlate https://github.com/rynop/CakePlate

40 points by garbowza 16y ago

'fast' and 'CakePHP' shouldn't be used in the same sentence. Cake is great for RAD (Rapid Application Development) but the framework itself is massively bloated to almost the same level as a full CMS. You'll get to market faster, but you'll also be planning a rewrite or migration sooner should you enjoy some degree of success.

garbowza 16y ago
Could you expand on what you see as the bloat? I find the base distribution of CakePHP to be very lean, and using it on half dozen production projects, I have found no issues with speed, especially with proper use of memcached and media compression.
- noodle 16y ago
  http://avnetlabs.com/php/php-framework-comparison-benchmarks http://avnetlabs.com/php/php-framework-comparison-benchmarks
  - mattcurry 16y ago
    These benchmarks are from two years ago. The version of Cake used isn't even a stable release (1.2 RC1). Either way 1.3 has replaced 1.2 and is plenty fast for 99.99999% of sites.
    - noodle 16y ago
      fair enough, it was the newest one i could find. this and similar reports from others are the reason i don't use cake, though, and it seems like it would be in their best interest to get some newer information out there. (i made my choices years ago though)
    - karanbhangui 16y ago
      Here's a more recent benchmark: http://symfony-reloaded.org/fast http://symfony-reloaded.org/fast
      - jaredstenquist 16y ago
        Odd that they didn't include codeigniter in the test
        tgriesser 16y ago
        Probably because if they had, wouldn't have been the fastest in all tests, or at least not by much.
    - robryan 16y ago
      No to mention that these kind of things are going to be hard to really measure. Each framework is doing such diverse things that each website will get different performance. Also I wouldn't trust a framework maker to do these tests.
    - powertower 16y ago
      Another benchmark source... http://www.yiiframework.com/performance/ http://www.yiiframework.com/performance/ Take with a grain of salt.
      - josephmoniz 16y ago
        This benchmark seems to be either out dated or somewhat falsified. I ran the same benchmark on my system and CI out performed Yii ( https://github.com/JosephMoniz/BlueElephant/blob/master/docs/benchmark.md https://github.com/JosephMoniz/BlueElephant/blob/master/docs... ) . The main point though is that with or without caching (APC) CakePHP is the slowest by an order of magnitude. EDIT: yeah, pretty sure the original Yii benchmark is dated as the graph has older versions while the phpmark repo has slighlty newer ones ( http://code.google.com/p/phpmark/source/browse/#svn/trunk http://code.google.com/p/phpmark/source/browse/#svn/trunk )
      - mario2027 16y ago
        http://www.phpkode.com http://www.phpkode.com another PHP Framework source
noodle 16y ago
agreed. i like codeigniter, which is an order of magnitude or two faster than cake.
- DanHulton 16y ago
  Consider Kohana, then, which forked off from CodeIgniter years ago and learned from the many mistakes CI made (most notably being a complete inability to adapt), and was designed with PHP 5 in mind from day one.
  - noodle 16y ago
    i considered it in the past, and i might make the switch with all the internal crap going on with CI. but my biggest current project is CI-based and making the conversion would be...tough. plus, their docs suck.
    - GBond 16y ago
      Can you expand on "all the internal crap going on with CI"? I'm building with CI for a project so I'm curious.
      - noodle 16y ago
        http://adamgriffiths.co.uk/blog/codeigniter/an_open_letter_to_ellislab http://adamgriffiths.co.uk/blog/codeigniter/an_open_letter_t...
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - tgriesser 16y ago
      It looks like they've been working with the community to try and clear a lot of that stuff up, I really enjoy using CI myself so I've been interested. http://codeigniter.com/news/the_official_codeigniter_community_branch/ http://codeigniter.com/news/the_official_codeigniter_communi...
    - 16y ago
rynop 16y ago
I sort of agree with you - if you need twitter type scale, you will need to rewrite. Most frameworks are bloated (not setup to REALLY scale) out of the gate. CakePHP is very flexible, and if used correctly can scale for 99% of workloads. Especially if you leverage some of the php5 only nuances (cake 1.3 has been developed to support php4 and php5). CakePlate can steer you in the right direction - but is not an end all. It helps turn your idea into reality quicker. If your idea twitter scales, then you have cash to throw at the (good) problem. If you give Cake an honest shot, I'm confident you will like it.
qeorge 16y ago
I'll bite. I write CakePHP apps for my clients, and I've heard this "cake is slow" meme before. Never been a problem for us, and we've shipped a lot of apps. In almost all cases, the benchmark was done with no caching. I don't know who launches web apps with no caching, but they shouldn't be doing benchmarks. I don't concede that Cake is slow for any meaningful definition, but as a matter of point - I'll trade faster developers for a couple CPU cycles any day of the week.

Griever 16y ago

This is excellent. I've been wanting a similar PHP version of the Html5Boilerplate for some time now. If this saves me as much time as the Html5 version, I'd hop on this in a heartbeat. Seeing more PHP frameworks take this approach would be a great thing, I believe. The RoR commmunity has had this opportunity for quite some time now with Thoughtbots' Suspenders (https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders https://github.com/thoughtbot/suspenders) template.

mgkimsal 16y ago

Why not some form of user self-registration and admin management tool as well? I see a facebook connect in there, which helps, but a pure cake-based user reg/management system would go a long way towards a faster 'out of the box' experience.

garbowza 16y ago
CakePHP comes with that out of the box. You can use the built-in Auth component for registration and user management, and the "Bake" tools will give you the option of creating admin functions, similar to Django's.
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  Coming with an auth component vs something that provides pre-done models, views and controllers are two different things. Having something provided out of the box with some common defaults that I don't need to configure would be much handier for rapid development.
- sunny36 16y ago
  I use CakePHP (actually forced to). You can't compare the bake tools with Django admin. The UI of Django admin is usable in fact it's actually nice. I've had lot's of clients who like it. But the generated CSS by the bake tools is non-usable. I usually end up having to write the views for admin when using CakePHP compared to not having to do anything much when using Django.
  - josegonzalez 16y ago
    Unfortunately, bake's default skeleton is indeed pretty lame, but it is possible to replace this with other skeletons (https://github.com/josegonzalez/app_skellington https://github.com/josegonzalez/app_skellington for example, which does auth etc.) And Django Admin? I've since stopped my work on app_skellington in order to work on https://github.com/josegonzalez/cake_admin https://github.com/josegonzalez/cake_admin. It isn't complete, not by a long shot, and php's syntax makes it difficult to use a DSL without going outside the language into something like yaml files, but it will do.

josegonzalez 16y ago

You might want to update your copy to state that you are using the 1.3.6 version of CakePHP, and not the 1.3.3 version. As well, Bitly and Tinyurl would be better served as Behaviors or Datasources, but that's a separate discussion altogether. Good job otherwise.

garbowza 16y ago
Good catch! Fixed.

joshfinnie 16y ago

TL:DR Find code here: https://github.com/rynop/CakePlate https://github.com/rynop/CakePlate