li₃ (formerly lithium) is a full-stack web framework, for producing web applications. It is written in PHP[2] and is based on the model–view–controller development architecture. It is described as adhering to no-nonsense philosophies.[3]
In October 2009, CakePHP project manager Garrett Woodworth and developer Nate Abele resigned from the project to focus on lithium,[4][5] a framework code base originally being developed at the CakePHP project as "Cake3".[6]
In 2012 the project gained official sponsorship from Engine Yard.[7]
In January 2014 the project was rebranded under the name li₃.
With the release of version 1.0 on June 6, 2016, David Persson followed Nate Abele as lead developer of the project.[8][9]
In May 2020 a framework also named lithium[10][11] scored the 4th place (out of 104) in the composite score of TechEmpower Web Frameworks Benchmarks Round 19,[12] but it is a modern C++17 asynchronous web server based on epoll, a totally different web framework from li₃.
