The Significance of Choosing CodeIgniter for Web Development
It’s in PHP, it’s powerful and it’s popular. We’re talking about CodeIgniter, the open-source, cross-platform web framework that is widely used for rapid web development. This PHP-based framework is known for its small footprint, hassle-free configuration, and coding simplicity.
CodeIgniter is a lightweight framework but it is preferred for its resourcefulness. Though it supports a Model-View-Controller architecture, developers can ignore Models if they want to and can create apps with minimal use of Controllers and Views.
It also allows developers to build their own core libraries so that they can work according to their convenience. But these aren’t the only good things about the web framework. Apart from its polished toolkit, CodeIgniter offers a lot of facilities to developers to build full-featured web apps quickly and hassle-free.
Scroll down to learn about CodeIgniter’s key features and its significance for web development.
The Key Features CodeIgniter
We already know that CodeIgniter is lightweight in nature but big on features. We know that it has a ‘small footprint’ and enables rapid web development. But what are those features that make it such a potent platform? Let’s take a quick look at those.
- It features an Image Manipulation Library with support for ImageMagick and GD.
- It offers support for class extensions, hooks, and query builder databases.
- It has a unit testing class and template engine class.
- It has flexible URI routing and full-page caching.
- It has data encryption and application profiling facilities.
Why Opt for It — The Key Reasons
Now we know that CodeIgniter’s features make it a resourceful platform. But apart from that, there are more reasons to opt for CodeIgniter development services. Let’s have a look at those.
Customizable
Customizability is one of the prime criteria to select a particular platform. So when it comes to that, let’s just say that a developer won’t be disappointed. The presence of features like Image Manipulation Library, different classes, and class extensions make custom web development easy for programmers.
Robust Security
CodeIgniter has a built-in mechanism for providing protection against CSRF. Furthermore, features like XSS filtering, data encryption, and context-sensitive escape fortify the safety measures. In short, opting for CodeIgniter ensures that your apps will get maximum security.
Easy Migration
CodeIgniter’s migrations feature is another big reason for developers to choose it as their development platform. With CodeIgniter, developers can alter and migrate their database in an organized manner. Irrespective of where the old data is currently stored, developers can execute and maintain database migration programmatically.
Error Management
CodeIgniter comes with Exceptions, the feature that provides the facilities for error logging, error handling, and reporting. It even provides custom exceptions that make it easier for developers to catch and rectify errors while coding.
Some custom exceptions are PageNotFound, Database, and Config. Some actions, however, depend on the development environment. But the default action of CodeIgniter is to show a detailed report.
SEO-Friendly
This is another remarkable attribute of CodeIgniter. It has a segment-based approach to URL structure because of which the URLs generated are search engine friendly. This also makes optimization easy for search engine optimizers. URI Library, URI Routing, and URL helper are the tools that help programmers to generate human-friendly URLs.
Straightforward Coding
Thanks to its collection of classes, exceptions, easy configuration, and other useful tools, working with CodeIgniter becomes a hassle-free affair. This straightforward coding enables developers to focus equally on the overall development, rather than worrying about one particular sector.
Testing Facilities
HTTP testing, mocking, controller testing, benchmarking, debugging, and testing responses — when it comes to testing facilities, CodeIgniter stands ready with almost all necessary tools. All these features enable testers to carry out thorough tests and keep the app bug-free.
Clear and Proper Documentation
While working with frameworks, a developer shall need help with certain things. This is another great thing about CodeIgniter. Its clear and proper documentation helps developers find any information and help easily. Right from its introduction and configuration to controllers and responses, one can find detailed information on anything.
Community Support
The source code of CodeIgniter is maintained on GitHub. So CodeIgniter enjoys the support of a thriving community. This means that a programmer, whether a beginner or an expert, can find the needed help here. Also, if a developer wishes to fix an error or add another feature, he/she can do it here.
The Benefits of Choosing CodeIgniter
We have shown you the reasons to choose CodeIgniter as your web development framework. Now we enlist a few benefits of picking it.
Rapid Web Development: Because of its powerful and resourceful tools, working with CodeIgniter becomes easy. It makes for easy configuration which means that developers don’t need to waste much time here.
Other features also make it easy for developers to quickly code their way to the app, which is why CodeIgniter is often considered a suitable platform for rapid web development.
Easy to Find Developers: Since CodeIgniter is quite easy to learn and work with, several PHP developers tend to have an inclination toward this framework. That’s why it becomes easy for investors to find experienced developers for their work.
Error-free and Bug-free apps: We have already seen how CodeIgniter helps developers keep their apps free of errors and bugs by providing them with top-notch error handling and testing facilities. This enables them to develop apps with almost zero errors.
Quick Market Time: Since CodeIgniter makes for rapid development, clients don’t need to wait much for their apps to reach the market. Its features also make for low investment since no external resources are required for the development.
Take Away
CodeIgniter, undoubtedly, is a highly useful platform, especially when it comes to rapid web development. It encloses some great traits like thorough documentation, strong security mechanism, great testing facilities, effective error handling, and SEO-friendly tools that offer great significance to web development.
But working with any potent platform requires experienced expertise; it needs professionals who can understand the prerequisites of a business and can provide them with customized CodeIgniter development services. After all, don’t we all need reliable partners who can help us grow?
