Overview

Kohana PHP Framework is an open source PHP software development framework that helps php developers to build web applications faster, and also, more effectively by providing them with a set of built-in objects/classes. It also enforces highly organized coding standards.

The Kohana PHP Framework is just like Ruby on Rails; it implements the well known software engineering design pattern—Model View Controller(MVC). The Model View Controller software design pattern guides engineers to design their software codes into three separate parts which includes:

• Models: The objects that manipulate data sources and data stores.
• Views: The html and css files with inline php codes that present the user interface and controls to the application users.
• Controllers: Objects in charge of the business logic, displaying the page(views), and routing the click actions from the views to the model and back to the views.

Kohana was originally based upon the well documented codeigniter php framework, but it stands out due to its strict use of OOP best practices and standards.

Kohana PHP is officially defined by its creators to be a PHP 5 framework that uses the model view controller architectural pattern. It aims to be secure, lightweight, and easy to use.

Why use Kohana PHP framework?

PHP is a very easy to use programming language, that's the reason why its loved by the web development community. It's easy to use nature and learning curve has attracted a lot of users. But PHP has one downside. Most experienced developers don’t love coding php due to its little Object orientation, and its often nasty codes. With Kohana PHP, any php developer from beginner to expert will all get to write standard codes which we see in the Java World, or the .NET world. Kohana bridges the gap between amateur web developers and designers who love php because its easy, and the experienced web developers who go fully into Object Oriented codes and nothing less. Kohana enforces true software engineering and brings it closer to the php world which has little or no standards. So the major reason why you should use Kohana PHP Framework for your php work is to ensure that your codes are of standards, and you follow the best practices which go a long way to help teams of developers from beginners to experts to easily work together with the PHP programming language.

Kohana PHP Framework solves the problem of beginners, and intermediate developers who have nasty codes and are killing the overall work of the team. With the well documented and standard practices of Kohana, a developer in India can write the code and a developer in Africa can optimise the code without asking a lot of questions, because everything will clearly be a model, view or a controller, and it will be easy to understand what it was meant for exactly.

Key features of Kohana PHP framework

Kohana PHP has some very good features that makes it stand out from all other PHP frameworks. The features include: 

• Fully Object Oriented: Object oriented programming is an industry standard since the introduction of C++. Many developers working with Java programming languages are comfortable with Object and classes, and they prefer the order it brings to programming. Kohana PHP being fully Object oriented, it automatically brings this order and industry standard programming to PHP; with this, you wont get developers saying you are just a php developer because Kohana PHP is a standard software programming platform for enterprise and web applications.
• In built templating: Kohana PHP like most other standard web frameworks has a very easy to use template engine. You get a simple html file, covert it into a kohana template by renaming it to template.php, fit in two php variables— $title and $content, to signify where the title of the page and where the content will be displayed. That’s all you need to have a kohana php template.
• In built Internationalization: Kohana PHP strongly supports internationalization and good documentation. With Kohana, all you need to do is create the various language files and use an internationalization object to reference the files depending on the language from page to page. Switching the language, automatically switches the language file referenced.
• Robust ORM Engine: ORM stands for Object Relational Mapping. It’s a programming concept in which your codes directly manipulate the database tables as objects, while the SQL gets generated for you behind the scenes. The ORM in Kohana is easy due to its use of convention over configuration. Its the best ORM I have seen in the php world and its 100% stable. To make use of the ORM, you simply extend the ORM class in your model and that model will be able to manipulate your database without any SQL code.
• MVC: the framework is based on MVC, and this helps to bring about a lot of order, eases code maintenance and team work. I can get any Kohana PHP application, and easily understand what every code does because it must flow from a controller to a view or to a model then to a view. And that’s all about it.
• Clean and Search Engine Friendly URLs: Kohana PHP framework has a good implementation of controllers where every url call or reference in a kohana based site refers to a controller and its function, as in site/controller/function/parammeters. For example, calling a blog controller to show a post with ID 1 will be as simple as your-site.com/index.php/blog/showPost/1 where index.php is the front controller, blog is a controller object and show post a blog->showPost function that takes a parameter which is the post ID.
• Libraries and helpers and third party classes: With kohana php, you have a set of libraries and helpers for almost everything you need as a web developer. For instance, sending out an email is as easy as calling email::send() function. There are more helpers and libraries, getting to read about them on the Kohana php website will make you feel like your life as a developer has been taken away and you are just a secretary.

Also with Kohana PHP, you can get any available php class from the internet and use it in the kohana framework by simple dropping the file in a folder in your kohana site known as vendor, and then, instantiating the class in your codes. That’s all! It sounds too good to be true but thats all you need to use that PEAR object or that zend class or that php class you have been using for years with kohana framework on your next project.