Kohana (web framework)

"Kohana" redirects here. For the whale, see List of captive orcas#Kohana.

Kohana

Developer(s)	Kohana Software Foundation
Stable release	3.0 / September 17, 2009
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Web application framework
License	BSD-style open source license
Website	http://kohanaphp.com

Kohana is an open source, PHP5, web application framework that uses the Model View Controller design pattern. It aims to be secure, lightweight, and easy to learn and use. It supports only version 5 or higher of PHP in order to make full use of the improvements in that version's object-oriented design.

History

Kohana was originally created as a project fork of the CodeIgniter PHP framework under the name Blue Flame. The principal reason for the fork was to create a more community-based web application framework as many users were frustrated with CodeIgniter's lack of bug fixes and inclusion of new features requested by the community. In July 2007, Blue Flame was renamed to Kohana to avoid possible trademark issues. The name Kohana was chosen when the developers began looking through Native American dictionaries to find words that would have little copyright conflict. Kohana is the Sioux word for 'swift.' It is also the Japanese word for 'tiny flower', Ukrainian and Polish word for 'beloved' (only of feminine gender) and the name of a famous killer whale (Kohana) — none of which have any relation to the original intended meaning.

While the initial release of Kohana was essentially an improved version of CodeIgniter, by the end of 2007 the Kohana development team had released version 2.0 which was a complete re-write from the ground up. The new version 2.0 was strictly a PHP5 framework and has formed the basis for all other releases since.

Differences between Kohana and CodeIgniter

File:Kohana-modules.png

Cascading resources visualized.

• Strict PHP5 OOP. Offers many benefits: visibility protection, automatic class loading, overloading, interfaces, abstracts, and singletons.
• Kohana has joined the GoPHP5 initiative. All releases from 2.2 on will conform with this project.
• Continues CodeIgniter design patterns. Anyone who has used CodeIgniter will quickly understand Kohana's structure and design patterns.
• Community, not company, driven. Kohana is driven by community discussion, ideas, and code. Kohana developers are from all around the world, each with their own talents. This allows a rapid and flexible development cycle that can respond to bugs and requests within hours, instead of days or months.
• GET, POST, COOKIE, and SESSION arrays all work as expected. Kohana does not limit your access to global data, but offers the same filtering and XSS protection that CodeIgniter does.
• Cascading resources, modules, and inheritance. Controllers, models, libraries, helpers, and views can be loaded from any location within your system, application, or module paths. Configuration options are inherited and can be dynamically overwritten by each application.
• No namespace conflicts. Class suffixes, like _Controller, are used to prevent namespace conflicts. This allows a User's controller and Users model to both be loaded at the same time.
• True auto-loading of classes. This includes libraries, controllers, models, and helpers. This is not pre-loading, but true dynamic loading of classes, as they are instantiated.
• Helpers are static classes, not functions. For example, instead of using form_open(), you would use form::open().
• Library drivers and API consistency. Libraries can use different "drivers" to handle different external APIs transparently. For example, multiple session storage options are available (database, cookie, and native), but the same interface is used for all of them. This allows new drivers to be developed for existing libraries, which keeps the API consistent and transparent.
• Powerful event handler. Kohana events can by dynamically added to, replaced, or even removed completely. This allows many changes to Kohana execution process, without modification to existing system code.
• Kohana features a built-in ORM library, whereas CodeIgniter does not.

Third-party vendors

Vendor	Usage	Inclusion
phputf8	All of the Kohana UTF-8 functions are ported from the phputf8 project	Core
Popoon	The default XSS filter used by Kohana was originally created by Christian Stocker for the popoon framework. The original file is called externalinput.php	Core
HTML Purifier	The alternative XSS filter used by Kohana is HTML Purifier	Optional
SwiftMailer	The recommended way to send emails in Kohana is using SwiftMailer	Optional
PHP Markdown	Markdown is a simple text-to-HTML formatting tool	Optional

Release history

Colour	Meaning
Red	Old release; not supported
Yellow	Old release; still supported
Green	Current release
Blue	Future release

Product Name	Major Version	Code Name	Minor Version	Release Date	Significant Changes
BlueFlame	1.0		1.0	2007-05-31	Initial release Forked from CodeIgniter 1.5.4 (pre-release, svn revision 566)
Kohana	2.0	Superlime	2.0	2007-11-08	Complete rewrite Dropped PHP4 support in favour of PHP5 Fully OOP framework No legacy code Modules included Cascading resources concept
	2.1	Schneefeier	2.1.0	2008-02-05	New libraries: Cache, Image, ORM, Payment New helpers: num, expires, email, html::link(), html::breadcrumb(), arr::binary_search(), valid::standard_text(), text::widont(); New modules: Auth & Forge; PostgreSQL & MySQLi drivers gzip output compression, bug fixes & API changes
			2.1.1	2008-02-06	Fixed bug with extending helpers Added English (UK), German and Macedonian languages
			2.1.2	2008-06-10	Added: KOHANA_IS_WIN constant for checking for a Windows environment Fixed: Lots of bugfixes
	2.2	Efímera	2.2.0	2008-08-08	New libraries (Captcha) New helpers (upload, format, etc.) New configuration attributes, New drivers (MSSQL, PayPal Pro) General cleanup, optimization and bug fixes
	2.3	Kernachtig	2.3.0	2008-12-20	New Router New Database library (object_db)
			2.3.1	2009
			2.3.2	2009
		Aegolius	2.3.3	2009-05-31
		Buteo Regalis	2.3.4	2009-06-05
	2.4		2.4		New database library Updates to ORM View caching
	3.0	Renaissance	3.0	2009-09-17	Complete rewrite of the framework HMVC design pattern Additional features added to core Helpers and libraries are now all classes with class and/or member methods and properties

External links

• Kohana site
• Kohana Development (Redmine) site / repository

See also

• List of web application frameworks
• Comparison of web application frameworks
• CodeIgniter