CakePHP

CakePHP is a PHP framework built around convention over configuration, with code generation and scaffolding for rapidly building prototypes. Recent releases have added query projection into data transfer objects, a configuration attribute and container delegate for dependency injection, additional column types for MySQL and PostgreSQL, and fluent builders for sortable pagination fields, each documented in a migration guide.

Scaffolding is the capability that defines the early experience. Generating working create, read, update and delete interfaces from a database schema turns the first day of a project into something demonstrable, which matters most when the requirement is still being negotiated with whoever asked for it.

Having a commercial entity behind the project is unusual among PHP frameworks and worth knowing about. CakeDC was established by the framework's founder and sells development, consultancy, training and code review, which gives an organisation somewhere to buy support rather than relying entirely on community goodwill.

Publishing a migration guide with each release is the practice that keeps a long-lived framework usable. Upgrading is the most common reason a team abandons a framework, and a complete list of what changed is what turns that from a project into a task.