PHP vs Angular: Which One is Right For Your Project?

Developing web apps and websites that scale efficiently and offer Fort Knox-level security is a dream.

Therefore, choosing the most suitable and reliable technologies for your projects is critical.

This article will settle the debate about PHP vs Angular and help you choose the most suitable tech for your next project.

First up, Angular.

Features

• Open source: Angular is open source and free.
• Cross-platform support: You can build applications and websites for all platforms mobile, web, native desktop, and native mobile and operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac.
• Performance and speed: Angular converts templates into highly-optimized code for JavaScript virtual machines. It offers instant rendering of apps in just CSS and HTML and facilitates better SEO optimization. Additionally, Angular applications load faster with Component Router, delivering automatic code splitting.
• Scalability: The Angular framework is highly scalable that helps developers meet massive data requirements by creating data models over Immutable.js or other push models.
• Simple interface: It has declarative templates that help you build app features like UI views quite faster. You can also extend its template language using components.
• Productivity: You can instantly start creating apps, adding tests and components, and deploying using command-line tools. It offers intelligent code completion, quick error check, and feedback in leading IDEs and editors.
• Testing: Dependency injection present in Angular helps you test code by injecting dummy or mock data into your controller. Next, it assesses its behavior and output and utilizes nonexistent HTTP providers to push counterfeit responses into controllers from servers.
• Built-in components: Angular has functional, built-in features like navigation elements, buttons, layout, data tables, indicators, and more. Therefore, Angular can easily create intuitive app interfaces and develop apps like Gmail, Android OS, Google Drive, etc.
• Code reusability: It helps you save time and accelerates your development process.

Applications

Angular is finding wide usage these days due to its impeccable features for creating high-performance and scalable applications. Here are just a few of its possible uses:

• To build progressive web apps: You can use Angular to develop high-performing progressive web apps to deliver offline, app-like experiences with zero-step installation.
• For desktop app development: Angular is used to create desktop applications compatible across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• To develop native apps: Angular framework works with mobile, and hence, you can use it to create mobile applications.
• To create single-page apps: By retrieving a webpage’s critical parts (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) in a single instance, Angular can handle complexities easily. Thus, it can be one of the best options to develop single-page apps.
• To create animations: The intelligent API of Angular lets you create high-performance animations and complex choreographies involving fewer lines of code.
• To create accessible apps: You can create accessible apps with developer guides, built-in a11y testing infrastructure, and ARIA-enabled components.

Additionally, creating certain apps in Angular is seamless, including video streaming applications such as YouTube and PlayStation; ecommerce apps; real-time data apps such as weather.com; and content-focused and news websites like The Guardian.

Next up, PHP.

Features

• Free: PHP’s standard license is free. Therefore, anyone can easily download, install, and use it to complete their web development projects. Developers can also check its code and contribute to bug fixes and new features.
• Simplicity: Developers love working with PHP due to its simplicity, whether beginner or experienced. It’s easy to learn and is similar to C in terms of syntax with its logical, organized structure.
• Performance: The database connectivity and data loading are faster in PHP. Therefore, it’s also efficient in database management, server administration, mail functionality, and so on. Make sure to read our PHP benchmarks blog post.
• Object-oriented programming: Like C++, PHP is an object-oriented programming language with useful features such as data encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, etc.
• Compatibility: PHP supports cross-platform compatibility and runs across multiple operating systems such as macOS, Windows, Unix, Linux, and more. Its scripts also work seamlessly across different servers like Apache and IIS and devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
• Real-time Monitoring: PHP enables you to fetch server logs easily so that you can monitor resource utilization like memory, CPU, and other data.
• Flexibility: The embedding capability of PHP is excellent; hence, you can integrate it easily with other technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, XML, and others.
• Database support: It supports multiple databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Oracle, etc. Being database-friendly, you can add, change, or delete data directly in the database system.
• Exceptional handling: PHP generates quick error warnings as it supports error-reporting constants. It allows you to spot bugs and errors easily and fix them before they cause any big trouble.

In addition to all these features, PHP facilitates magic constants, cookies, regular expressions, shell command line execution, PDO class, and more.

Applications

Even though PHP is a general-purpose scripting language, developers mainly use PHP for server-side web development. Nevertheless, there are a lot of applications of PHP, both in and beyond a web context:

• Creating websites and web applications: PHP lets you create modern, interactive applications and websites with greater customization and a user-friendly interface. To accomplish this, it utilizes a 3-tier web architecture that supports your server, browsers, and database systems linearly. As a result, these web-based products are high-performing and capable of integrating with many services and facilitating secure online payments.
• Building ecommerce apps: PHP makes it easy for you to build ecommerce apps. You can use PHP-based web frameworks such as Laravel, CodeIgniter, Symfony, and many others. PHP enables apps to scale seamlessly and is helpful for both early-stage startups to big enterprises. Some of the ecommerce platforms that leverage PHP are Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
• Creating Content Management Systems (CMS): CMS has become immensely useful for content marketing. PHP helps create web CMS platforms without hassles so you can meet this demand. It supports multiple databases and can interact easily with various services via protocols like POP3, HTTP, IMAP, COM, SNMP, and more.
• Representing data: With PHP, you can use tools like Image_Graph to create data presentations in a vast number of formats, including graphs and charts like pie charts, lines, bars, columns, and more.
• Building GUI-based applications: Using GUI like ZZEE, PHP-GTK2, etc., that support PHP scripts, you can create GUI-based applications.
• Image processing and graphic design: PHP is helpful in image processing and graphic design. You can integrate PHP-based apps and libraries like Imagine, ImageMagic, and GD library. In addition, you can create thumbnails, rotate images, resize and crop them, add watermarks, and take out pictures in several image formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF, etc. Robotic Drone control: You can use PHP for drone control. People also use it to calculate, download, upload, and display data interactively.

Want to see an even more in-depth comparison? Head to this post to read on, or check out our full guide to PHP here.