On PHPBuilder.com Jason Gilmore has posted another article in his series looking at lightweight frameworks. In this latest article he looks at the PHP Fat-Free Framework, a PHP 5.3 framework the comes bundled in a single 55KB file.

If you're keen to start capitalizing upon the great framework-oriented features you've heard so much about but aren't yet ready to invest the significant time required to master one of the more involved solutions, consider investigating one of the lightweight solutions such as the PHP Fat-Free Framework. In this article I'll show you just how easy it is to get started building Web sites using this deceptively tiny (55kB) framework.

You'll need a PHP 5.3 install to get the framework working - several bits in its core use 5.3-only features. He shows how, at its simplest, the framework can be used to generate "clean URLs" even if it just routes to HTML files. Next is setting up dynamic routing then building page templates and MySQL integration. If you're looking for more detail on the framework and what it has to offer, visit the project's page on SourceForge.

On the TechZinger blog today there's a new post looking at the Fat-Free PHP framework and some of their opinions on it and the features it offers.

Even though I am pretty proud of my efforts, late last year I stumbled onto a framework that really caught my attention, the PHP Fat-Free Framework. It has the elements of simplicity I feel really allow a developer to push out code quickly. It's very well thought out and feels very tornado-like in it's design style.

He found the Fat-Free Framework to be a "breath of fresh air" in his development and how it uses things like namespacing and OOP handling for rendering and routing. He notes that it feels similar to the tornado framework in its handling and that the included ORM is useful enough for most needs.