Today I googled for “better than codeigniter” which produced only 2 results and one of them pointed me to Joomla Framework being better than CodeIgniter.

I am building a CMS with different modules (static files, product catalog, shopping cart etc) and was curious how am I doing comparing to Joomla. Right now I’m just developing the admin interface and I’m using a modified version of CodeIgniter

Here are some findings:
General settings:
- no cacheing, no loging, no output compression
- multilanguage application
- pentium IV 2gb RAM

My CMS & Framework
Page generated: edit form for a product
Included files: 30
Total execution time: 0.13secs

Joomla 1.5
Page generated: edit form for an article
Included files: 118
Total execution time: 0.38sec (without the framework inclusion… for some reason I couldn’t include the benchmark class before the framework inclusion)

Obviously joomla is more feature-reach but 0.38secs/request seems a bit too much.

I would like to find how is your codeigniter application performing.
If you have some figures for other frameworks (drupal, symphony, cake) it would be great.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to start a flame war between applications/frameworks since each has it’s own target audience and meets certain needs.

I don’t mean this in a “flame” way but this seems a bit silly to me.

Joomla is a multipurpose system, of course it is going to do more stuff than your custom codeigniter system.

Anyway, those 118 includes, they wouldn’t be a part of the wysiwig editor would they? If they are then your comparison needs looking at.

Also, were you running joomla in legacy mode or not? Did you know that joomla is completely rewritten but also has built in 99% backward compatibility to the “old” joomla code?

It is a bit like comparing a rabbit to a washing machine if you ask me.

The homepage required 105 includes so the wysiwyg editor shouldn’t require that much.
I know joomla is multipurpose system what do you make of the 0.38secs/request?
The application was not in “legacy” mode.

I don’t think it’s like comparing a rabbit to a washing mashine… more like comparing a cotton-only clothing washing machine and a universal clothing washing machine.

I’ll be honest and say that i have not looked fully into how the 1.5 architecture works but i do know how joomla 1.0.x works.

I’ll say one thing about that…caching.

The caching mechanism in joomla 1.5 is meant to be astounding and is rumoured to look like it will leave it’s peers standing.

I know in your post you said no caching, but joomla does a fair amount to render it’s content so caching is quite a big thing i think.

I run a joomla 1.0.x site and don’t have caching enabled. I am very very happy with it’s load times and i think my site uses quite a lot of joomla functions

The only thing i have a problem with is how many db calls it makes. They are quite a few. Have a look at the volume of db calls if you can and post that. That would be interesting. It will also give you an insight into what it is upto.

audiopleb - 28 June 2007 02:56 PM

The only thing i have a problem with is how many db calls it makes. They are quite a few. Have a look at the volume of db calls if you can and post that. That would be interesting. It will also give you an insight into what it is upto.

Comparing an MVC version of EE against Joomla 1.5 would be a better comparison. The concepts of components, modules, plugins, templates. etc. in Joomla 1.0.x and 1.5 are deeply intertwined with storing registry information in database tables, thus the large number of queries. The current template, the current component having focus, the modules associated with the current component, the current menu options, template to display for the any particular component, authorization (what to show and not show a particular user), etc. are rendered for each template instance dynamically based on queries. Joomla 1.0.x/1.5 essentially constructs every page on-the-fly based on table data.

Joomla 1.5 uses a large number of design patterns within the framework that go considerably beyond Codeigniter. For example, 1.5 uses lazy-initialization to a greater extent becuase of the modularity mentioned above, factory patterns (classes with get functions for handling frequent or redundant operations), uses an observer pattern (event listener) allowing controllers to trigger events (call other controllers or processes), etc.

This does not mean that CodeIgniter could not be extended to support similar functionality. However, CodeIgniter was never intended to support much of what Joomla 1.5 supports—it was designed to be a lightweight framework with basically limitless extensibility. Future versions of EE based on an MVC infrastructure might have a feature set more comparably with Joomla 1.5. At the moment, it’s like comparing apples and oranges from an MVC perspective.

I’m sure you have fine reasons for doing this type of comparison but I am still going to point out that it’s a fairly significant waste of your time. You should be focused on things like code maintainability, speed of development, stability, product quality, etc. Your users won’t care one ounce about a few milliseconds in page response time.

From realy a long time I am seeing the debate on net about Codeigniter Vs joomls. Everybody knows whats better but the problem is the “individual plus over minus of others”. Then why not to merge them. CI is BEST PHP FRAMEWORK, and joomla is BEST CMS. now you want to make fast web application focusing on your application (CI PART) not on design or layouts etc (Joomla Part). then try this
xCIDEVELOPER, USE CI FOR JOOMLA DEVELOPMENT