Features

• easy to install;
• automatic dynamic scaffolding of a complete user interface, including automatic form generation and validation, hyperlinks for viewing for editing related objects, selecting related objects using dropdowns and dialogs, Query By Example and sorting query results;
• user interface follows MVC pattern for separation of layout and code and logical separation between domain model and user interface;
• meta data based dynamic Object Relational Mapping (ORM) with object caching, polymorphism and navigation over relationships without coding;
• encapsulation without writing property getter and setter methods;
• ready-for-use user interface pages, components, widgets and dialogs;
• applications each have their own entry point to enable web server native authorization on a per-application basis;
• context scouting for returning the user to the page where he started with a task; 
• many details of user interface can be overridden and customized;
• extendable code management scheme for overriding framework behavior without changing framework code,
• website with tutorial, documentation explaining concepts and design, practical howto's and hypercode browsers for browsing and searching the framework code to see how it works and how it can be overriden and exteded in undocumented ways
• the framework's design has a history of over 10 years,

• Support of User authorization on application and type level (info);
• Cross site scripting and request forgery prevention ;
• Database abstraction with direct support for MySQL and SqlLite 2 databases, other databases are supported through PDO interface (requires PHP5);
• Uses Database transactions (info);
• Cascaded delete and protection against delete if dependents exist;
• User administration and authentication plugin avaliable (separate download)
• AJAX support (1.4.beta2)
• The mapping of persistent object fields to database columns with different names has been debugged (1.4.rc1)

Requirements

• webserver with PHP version 4.3 or higher;
• Database that supports full SQL JOIN syntax (in beta, production version requires MySql 3.23.2 or higher);
• modern web browser (IE 6, Mozilla 1.5, try out the examples to see if your browser is OK for phpPeanuts).

Limitations

• limited localization and internationalization support (can be overridden);
• database driver must support quoting of parameters (this may be a problem with ODBC);
• 1 to 1 mapping of classes and fields to database tables and columns (can be overridden) (polymorphic persistency mapping to multiple tables is supported)
• The risk of reference anomalies require applications to follow certain coding guidelines.

WARNING: It is not practically possible to adapt the framework to shield your applications from bugs and exploits in the OS, PHP, mySQL, and other tools and libraries you may be using. This includes known bugs and exploits in older versions. You are therefore advised not to use old versions of the framework, php, mySQL, etc.