20 Great PHP Libraries You Need to Know

You’re in the middle of a project, and need to get everything done as soon as possible. To keep the deadline and still have a life, you would better to collect this awesome library on your fingertip. By knowing this library capability, then you’ll know when to use any of them.

Charting Library

You can create simple graph or chart using GD library on PHP, but to help you create more complex chart, then you’ll need this awesome library.

  1. pChart – a PHP class to build charts.
  2. Libchart – Simple PHP chart drawing library.
  3. JpGraph – Object-oriented graph creating library for PHP.
  4. Open Flash Chart – Flash based charting library.

RSS Parser Library

Parsing a RSS is not a fun thing to do, so you would better put this library and get everything done.

  1. MagpieRSS – RSS for PHP.
  2. SimplePie – Super-fast, easy-to-use, RSS and Atom feed parsing in PHP.

Thumbnail Generator

Just another way to create thumbnail.

  1. phpThumb – The PHP thumbnail creator.

Payment

Dealing with an e-commerce site? Need payment solution? Don’t worry. Let this library help you.

  1. PHP Payment Library – PHP Payment Library for Paypal, Authorize.net and 2Checkout (2CO)

OpenID

Just in case you need to implement OpenID to your project.

  1. PHP-OpenID – OpenID implementation in PHP.

Database Abstraction/ORM

Writing SQL Query isn’t really exciting. These library let you smile more.

  1. ADOdb – Database abstraction library for PHP.
  2. Doctrine – Object relational mapper (ORM) for PHP 5.2.3+ that sits on top of a powerful database abstraction layer (DBAL).
  3. Propel – Object-Relational Mapping framework for PHP5
  4. Outlet – an Open source object-to-relational mapping tool for PHP.

PDF Generator

  1. FPDF – PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with pure PHP.

Excel

Need to generate your report in Excel file. Well, you better have this library on your side.

  1. php-excel – Very simple library for generating excel documents from php on-the-fly.
  2. PHP Excel Reader – Parse and retrieve information from XLS files.

E-Mail

Don’t like PHP mail function? Put this library on your project, and you have more features when dealing with email.

  1. Swift Mailer – Free Feature-rich PHP Mailer.
  2. PHPMailer - Powerful email transport class with a big features and small footprint.

Unit Testing

For Test-driven development lover, these library will help you get your heart at home.

  1. SimpleTest – PHP unit test and web test framework.
  2. PHPUnit – Member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks and provides both a framework that makes the writing of tests easy as well as the functionality to easily run the tests and analyse their results.

Related posts:

  1. Ultimate Collection of PHP Libraries
  2. 4 Simple PHP RSS Parser
  3. 10 Steps to Becoming a Great Web Developer
  4. 101 PHP Tutorials for PHP Programmer Wannabe
  5. PHP Tips and Tricks

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Author

Gilang Chandrasa is founder of KomunitasWeb. A blogger and a web developer. Follow him at komunitasweb

March 17th, 2009 | Comments(33)

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33 Responses to “20 Great PHP Libraries You Need to Know”

  1. cool list! thanks!

    I can add that the PHP Payment Library you listed is brilliant – works like a charm.

    Sean
    http://twitter.com/SeanNieuwoudt

    Comment by Sean Nieuwoudt — March 18, 2009 @ 1:10 am

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  6. Great stuff – especially the payment library! Thanks for putting the list together :)

    Comment by Mark — March 18, 2009 @ 10:32 am

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  17. Cuando el tiempo es un factor determinante, mejor no usar php. Y cuando no lo es, mejor tampoco.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by blaxter — March 18, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

  18. @blaxter: Y que propones?

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by aNieto2k — March 18, 2009 @ 4:13 pm

  19. Como leí en barrapunto:

    - Solo hay 2 tipos de lenguajes:
    1.- Las que nadie usa.
    2.- De las que todo el mundo se queja.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by ZiTAL — March 18, 2009 @ 4:18 pm

  20. Una muy buena recopilación, tal vez se echa de menos alguna para el tratamiento de imágenes como GD o ImageMagick que normalmente suelen estar instaladas en casi todos los servidores (al menos la primera) y suelen ser muy utiles para transformar las fotografías y demás, al fin y al cabo cada persona sube las fotos como quiere xDD

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by esaiz — March 18, 2009 @ 4:32 pm

  21. De las que a mí nunca me faltan:

    Base da Datos: ezSQL
    Gestor de plantillas: Smarty
    Servicios Web: NuSoap

    Entre las que mencionas, la verdad es que no conocía PHPUnit, mis pruebas unitarias son de lo más rudimentarias y estaba buscando algo similar. Muchas gracias

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Luis Sancho — March 18, 2009 @ 4:32 pm

  22. Muy buena recopilación de librerías.

    Cuando el tiempo es un factor a tener muy en cuenta lo mejor que he probado es utilizar un framework. Yo desde que uso symfony soy hombre nuevo jejeje. Además muchas de las librerías que comenta aNieto2k están disponibles como plugins por lo que están completamente integrados y son muy fáciles de usar.

    Muy bueno tu blog Andrés, es el primero que tengo en mi SpeedDial de Firefox
    Un saludo!!

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by aramirez — March 18, 2009 @ 5:08 pm

  23. Muy buena recopilación. A mi me gustaría añadir las dos siguientes:

    R&OS pdf class

    XTemplates

    Los XTemplates, son un sistema de plantillas “puro”, no permiten código en su interior. Lo estoy poniendo en práctica con gente del equipo de diseño y producción con muy buenos resultados, ya que son capaces de generar y corregir el XHTML directamente, con dos reglas básicas, sin depender de un desarrollador ni saber qué es un for, jeje.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Tatai — March 18, 2009 @ 5:21 pm

  24. Excelente articulo muchas gracias!

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Oscar Antolinez — March 18, 2009 @ 5:24 pm

  25. Para el tema OpenID, ¿hay mas del estilo? Por ejemplo que reconozcan si hay usuario activo de Gmail o algo asi.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by josepzin — March 18, 2009 @ 5:40 pm

  26. Te recomendaria que incluyeses timthumb en la seccion de generador de miniaturas. Lo uso asiduamente en themes que ando diseñando, y es bastante comodo e inmediato. Una alternativa muy viable a phpthumb.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Madcore — March 18, 2009 @ 6:59 pm

  27. Yo utilizo un sistema de plantillas llamado Tiny But Strong

    http://www.tinybutstrong.com

    ¡Buena recopilación!

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Jordi — March 19, 2009 @ 9:13 pm

  28. Good list Andy, a few good reads there.

    This comment was originally posted on AndySowards.com :: Professional Web Design, Development, Programming, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster?

    Comment by Pliggs — March 19, 2009 @ 10:07 pm

  29. @aNieto2k, python, ruby, erlang, scala, perl, groovy o incluso java es mejor opción.

    php es el lenguaje peor diseñado de la historia.

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by blaxter — March 23, 2009 @ 5:04 am

  30. blaxter, según para que cosas puede ser mejor alguna de las alternativas que has dado….pero en el 90% de las aplicaciones web que se diseñan PHP cumple más que de sobra.

    Me dedico al desarrollo web, y de los lenguajes que has nombrado conozco python, ruby y java. Y la verdad es que me quedo con PHP o con Python….

    Ruby mola su framework: RoR (Ruby on Rails), pero sin él, es demasiado costoso el desarrollo desde cero de aplicaciones web.

    Usar Java, en la mayor parte de los proyectos, es matar moscas a cañonazos…

    This comment was originally posted on aNieto2K

    Comment by Tolito — March 23, 2009 @ 9:16 pm

  31. best PHP libraries http://komunitasweb.com/2009/03/20-great-php-library-you-need-to-know/

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    Comment by urskarthikn — December 17, 2009 @ 8:21 pm

  32. Some handy #php libraries http://bit.ly/61YkFf nice to see @phpfour ’s payment library is there

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    Comment by junal — December 22, 2009 @ 12:48 am

  33. 20 Great PHP Libraries You Need to Know | KomunitasWeb http://bit.ly/hdymL PHP libraries

    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

    Comment by delicious50 — January 1, 2010 @ 8:04 am

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