PHP vs Angular: Which One Suits Your Web Development Needs?

PHP vs Angular is a popular question among many although both of these technologies work together to create impeccable web based products. 

As such, it is essential to know about both and the differences between them.

What is Angular?

Angular or Angular 2.0, is an open-source, front-end TypeScript framework. It is designed to make your work easier in building complex, dynamic web applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

As an update over AngularJS, Angular offers a wide range of features and functionalities that make it useful for developing large-scale web applications. Some of the key features of Angular include a powerful template system, data binding, and a comprehensive set of tools for testing and debugging.

You can also use clone or mock data to test code and it’s known as “dependency injection”.

With Angular, you can build a wide range of products, which also include web, mobile, and desktop applications. Angular also works faster than its previous editions. 

What is PHP?

PHP is another open-source scripting language that is primarily used for server-side web development. 

While Angular takes care of the frontend for you, PHP can be used for establishing communication between the frontend and the database behind. In this way, PHP and Angular can complement each other. 

PHP is not only incredibly easy to setup, it also has a low cost, which has resulted in around 77.5% of websites adopting it for their websites. Not to mention that PHP enables you to create dynamic websites, establish links to databases, comprehensive applications, and more. PHP also supports Object Oriented Programming. 

PHP Vs Angular: Key Differences

Let’s now take a look at some of the key differences between PHP and Angular technologies. 

1. Server side vs client side scripting

Angular is meant to run on the frontend. In other words, it means running scripts like JavaScript or CSS on the client’s device, such as their browser, mobile devices, tabs, etc. 

This would naturally require a language for the server side operations and this is where PHP comes in. The PHP code would be the one responding to a client’s requests through HTML responses. 

2. Easier to Learn and Case Sensitivity

Since Angular and PHP are built on the foundations of other, more popular programming languages such as C and C++, they are familiar in nature and easy to learn as long as you’re aware of fundamentals like variables, objects, loops, and more. 

As far as case sensitivity goes, we can consider both to be partially case sensitive. When it comes to Angular, you will need to be careful of typing identifiers with accurate capitalization whereas Angular’s modules, directives, etc. are not case sensitive. 

PHP is case sensitive when it comes to variables, strings, etc. However, the same does not apply to functions. 

3. Ease of Installation

Angular is an exception when it comes to installing frontend applications thanks to the Angular CLI (Command Line Interface). This CLI eliminates the need to copy-paste configuration files. You will instead need to install Node.js and NPM Package Manager. You can find the steps here.

PHP is fairly easy to setup as well, as it requires a normal file download, accessible here, along with a few configurations needed along the way to installation. 

4. Tech Stack: Lamp / Mean

Before diving into the details, it is important to know what the two terms, MEAN and LAMP, stand for. 

First, MEAN stands for: 

MongoDB,

Express.js,

AngularJS,

and NodeJS. 

The MEAN stack belongs to Angular and is a strong choice for developing single-page applications along with cloud-native applications. 

The LAMP stack stands for:

Linux, 

Apache,

MySQL,

and PHP.

These technologies are known for being one of the most used technologies till date and highly cost-efficient, since all of them are open-source.    

5. Performance / Package Manager

A package manager makes it very simple to install software packages by automating the processes of managing, installing, and updating software libraries. 

Angular uses two popular package managers, NPM and Yarn. NPM comes with Node.js and is used for tasks like building, testing, and formatting your app. Yarn is faster and better suited for small projects.

PHP has many packages and extensions, which require software to manage them. The package managers for PHP are PEAR, Composer, and PECL.

6. Database Integration

Due to the nature of PHP, it is much faster and simpler to achieve database integration here compared to doing the same with Angular. For example, PHP can easily integrate with MySQL, as it is also a part of the stack. All you need do is write a few commands to establish a connection between the two and that’s it. 

Angular does not have direct access to a database by default. For a workaround, you will need to follow complicated steps, such as using Node.js to connect to a database and then using API endpoints to perform operations. 

7. Security / Debugging

Angular uses TypeScript, which helps keep apps and sites secure by catching and fixing errors faster. It also sanitizes untrusted values before inserting them into the DOM. Angular has built-in protection against attacks like XSS and HTTP vulnerabilities and tools like Angury and the debugger statement to help with debugging.

In comparison, PHP is more vulnerable to attacks, due to it just being a server side programming language, and more difficult to debug, for the same reason. Printing values and conducting operations can take longer. It also lacks strong features for debugging.  

8. Market Demand

Angular and PHP both have immense value and popularity in the tech market, which is further intensified by the fact that all the big companies, such as Facebook, Canva, YouTube, PayPal, etc. use either one of the technologies in question. If you’re a developer in India, this can give you a good estimate of the career growth associated with each software. 

This guide on Angular also offers some great insights into the current trends.

Overall, both PHP and Angular rank high in their respective categories consistently. 

Conclusion