Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Django Ninja VS CodeIgniter

Compare Django Ninja VS CodeIgniter and see what are their differences

Django Ninja logo Django Ninja

Django Ninja - Django REST framework with high performance, easy to learn, fast to code.

CodeIgniter logo CodeIgniter

A Fully Baked PHP Framework
  • Django Ninja Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-22
  • CodeIgniter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

Django Ninja features and specs

  • Fast Development
    Django Ninja allows for rapid development of REST APIs due to its declarative syntax and automatic generation of OpenAPI documentation.
  • Type Safety
    It supports Python type hinting which provides type safety and better integration with modern Python development practices.
  • Auto Validation
    With built-in support for Pydantic, input data is automatically validated which ensures data integrity and reduces boilerplate code.
  • Integration with Django
    It integrates seamlessly with Django, allowing developers to leverage existing models, views, and authentication mechanisms.
  • Lightweight
    Django Ninja is lightweight and designed to add minimal overhead to Django applications, thus improving performance.

Possible disadvantages of Django Ninja

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to Django REST Framework, the ecosystem and community around Django Ninja are smaller, leading to fewer third-party packages and community resources.
  • Feature Set
    Django Ninja offers a more limited set of features compared to mature frameworks like Django REST Framework which may lack advanced functionalities required for complex applications.
  • Learning Curve
    While the framework is designed to be simple, developers may still face a learning curve, especially if they are not familiar with type hinting and Pydantic.
  • Documentation
    The documentation, while improving, is not as extensive or detailed as some more established frameworks, which can make implementation more challenging.

CodeIgniter features and specs

  • Performance
    CodeIgniter is known for its exceptional performance and fast execution, which is beneficial for applications requiring quick load times.
  • Documentation
    CodeIgniter offers comprehensive and clear documentation, making it easier for developers to understand and use the framework effectively.
  • Easy to Learn
    CodeIgniter's simple and straightforward syntax makes it relatively easy for beginners to learn and start developing applications quickly.
  • Lightweight
    The framework is lightweight and does not impose many dependencies or require a specific server environment, providing flexibility to developers.
  • Community Support
    CodeIgniter has a strong and active community, which means plenty of resources, forums, and add-ons are available for developers.
  • Built-in Security Features
    CodeIgniter comes with built-in security features like XSS filtering and CSRF protection, helping developers to secure their applications with minimal effort.
  • MVC Architecture
    The framework follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, promoting clean code separation and better organization of the project.

Possible disadvantages of CodeIgniter

  • Lack of Modern Features
    CodeIgniter does not include many modern features found in other frameworks, such as built-in ORM or out-of-the-box RESTful API support.
  • Limited Modular Extensions
    It has fewer modular extensions compared to other frameworks like Laravel or Symfony, which can limit code reusability and scalability.
  • Manual Routing
    Routing in CodeIgniter is somewhat manual and less intuitive compared to other frameworks that offer more automatic and flexible routing mechanisms.
  • Outdated PHP Practices
    Some of the practices and conventions in CodeIgniter are considered outdated with respect to modern PHP development trends.
  • No Built-in Authentication
    CodeIgniter does not come with a built-in authentication system, requiring developers to implement their own or use third-party libraries.
  • Less Emphasis on Testing
    CodeIgniter has less built-in support and emphasis on unit testing compared to other frameworks like Laravel, making it harder to implement TDD or BDD.
  • Lack of Native Composer Support
    The framework's native support for Composer, PHP's dependency manager, is not as robust as other modern frameworks, which can complicate dependency management.

Django Ninja videos

Django Ninja Gold

CodeIgniter videos

PHP CodeIgniter tutorial: What is CodeIgniter and why should I use it? | lynda.com

More videos:

  • Review - Laravel vs Codeigniter - A quick comparison for you to decide
  • Review - Review Codeigniter 4

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Django Ninja and CodeIgniter)
Application And Data
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
6 6%
94% 94
Developer Tools
6 6%
94% 94
PHP MVC Framework
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Django Ninja and CodeIgniter. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Django Ninja and CodeIgniter

Django Ninja Reviews

We have no reviews of Django Ninja yet.
Be the first one to post

CodeIgniter Reviews

  1. A PSR-compliant framework with diverse set of facilities and capabilities

    You can build any kinds of web apps and sites with this framework without consuming substantial server resources.

    🏁 Competitors: Lumen Framework

CakePHP vs CodeIgniter: Which PHP Framework is Best for Development?
CodeIgniter: CodeIgniter was developed by EllisLab and released in February 2006. It is known for its simplicity and speed, designed to help developers create full-featured web applications quickly. CodeIgniter emphasizes a lean and minimalistic approach, providing just enough to get the job done without imposing too many restrictions.
Top 5 Laravel Alternatives
CodeIgniter is simpler to use for the majority of developers. Laravel’s convenience is matched only by its adherence to a small set of standards and guidelines. CodeIgniter also offers improved error handling and more leeway in terms of customization. Overall, in comparison of Laravel and CodeIgniter, CodeIgniter might be the simpler choice for most web programmers.
Framework review: Laravel vs CodeIgniter
Let's start with CodeIgniter first. It focuses on performance and speed. It offers a simple, easy-to-learn syntax, making it ideal for beginners. CodeIgniter uses its own proprietary Active Record implementation for database operations, which provides a simple and intuitive way to interact with data. Unlike Laravel, CodeIgniter does not enforce a specific architectural...
Source: infinyhost.com
10 Ruby on Rails Alternatives For Web Development in 2022
Laravel is a PHP web framework that was built by Taylor Otwell in 2011 as an attempt to replace the older framework CodeIgniter that lacked some important features, like built-in customer authentication and user authorization. The current version of the framework, Laravel 8.16 has a great infrastructure of web development tools that facilitate queue monitoring, server...
The Most Popular PHP Frameworks to Use in 2021
Laravel is billed as “The PHP Framework for Web Artisans.” It was developed by Taylor Otwell, who wanted a framework with elements that CodeIgniter didn’t have, such as user authentication.
Source: kinsta.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Django Ninja should be more popular than CodeIgniter. It has been mentiond 26 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Django Ninja mentions (26)

  • Building a Blog in Django
    > The only place I really see Django at large companies is as an api using DRF or something. This is not a bad thing. Using Django as an API backend is amazingly fast in terms of development time, especially with modern frameworks such as django-ninja [1]. Just use the built-in ORM to create models, write your endpoints, and use the built-in admin interface to play with the database if you don't have endpoints for... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Learning Django
    Personally, I also prefer django-ninja to DRF. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Django Views – The Right Way
    Or just use django-ninja if you are writing an API. Maybe it's just because I came from teams that used tornado and then fastapi but it seems like everything in this article would be solved by using a simpler interface for writing endpoints. https://django-ninja.rest-framework.com/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Django 4.2 released
    Also recommend Django-Ninja. It basically reimplements fastapi's type and decorator-based API construction, but embedded directly in django so you have access to django's ORM and middleware library. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Django 4.2 Released
    A good compromise I have found is to use Django Ninja [1]. It is inspired by FastAPI, so it has a lot of the nice things like the automatically generated Swagger/OpenAPI docs, as well as having routers as decorators, and using python types for automatic serialization. While I think FastAPI is great in its first class async support, Django has the Django ORM, plus Django Admin, which for me have been indisposable.... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
View more

CodeIgniter mentions (10)

  • 19+ Laravel Best Practices for Developers in 2024
    For history's sake, you should know that Laravel was built in place of the CodeIgniter framework as a modern replacement because the CodeIgniter framework missing important core features such as built-in support for user authentication and authorization. Since its initial launch in 2011, Laravel has implemented built-in support for localization, views, dealing with sessions, routing the request to the specific... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to Install Codeigniter on a Local Server in 2025?
    Visit the CodeIgniter official download page and download the latest version. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Top 12 PHP Frameworks For Web Development in 2024
    CodeIgniter is an open-source PHP framework with 18k+ stars and 7.8K forks on GitHub. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture and provides a structured way to create and organize code. It provides a set of libraries and an intuitive interface to accelerate PHP web app development. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Why I selected Elixir and Phoenix as my main stack
    Over the years I have tried different frameworks, mostly in PHP, like Code Igniter (2010), ProcessWire (2014) and Laravel (2015). - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • In One Minute : CodeIgniter
    CodeIgniter is an open-source php web application framework created by EllisLab Inc and it is now a project of British Columbia Institute of Technology. The framework implements a modified version of the Model-View-Controller design pattern. It is praised for its performance and the quality of its documentation. It's currently licensed under the MIT License, although the previous version was released under the... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Django Ninja and CodeIgniter, you can also consider the following products

FastAPI - FastAPI is an Open Source, modern, fast (high-performance), web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints.

Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans

Tastypie - Tastypie is a webservice API framework for Django.

Django - The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

CakePHP - The Rapid Development Framework for PHP