One of the most challenging parts in the early phases of project development is picking the proper Framework for your application. Although the cost of the product, the development team’s experience with it, the framework’s popularity, etc., are the standard criteria for a development team when selecting the framework, there are several other factors, such as third-party integrations, deployment, testing, and many more, that require deliberate consideration.
The PHP scripting language offers many frameworks with solid technical features, including Laravel, Symfony, Slim, CodeIgniter, Phalcon, Zend, Yii 2, CakePHP, etc. However, Laravel continues to rank first among PHP MVC frameworks. Along with being one of the most popular GitHub repositories, Laravel has around 45000+ stars.
Due to its advanced functionalities and development tools that speed up the production of online applications, Laravel performs better than competing web frameworks.
With its clean and reusable code, Laravel additionally aids website developers in streamlining their development procedures. Therefore, It’s one of the few frameworks with the adaptability and abundance of features that make it the ideal foundation for building websites and online apps.
What makes it so popular, and how does it meet all the requirements for your web application?
Let’s learn more about what Laravel is in this article and why it continues to be the top PHP framework today.
First, what is a framework?
We all reach a point in our lives as developers where we begin to see redundancy in creating similar functionalities and defining similar structures across several projects. At this point, we should start constructing our framework, incorporating the required design and all of those functionalities. Alternatively, we might use a framework that offers these features right out of the box.
In light of this, so, what is a framework? Well, according to Wikipedia:
“A software framework is a universal, reusable software environment that provides particular functionality as part of a larger software platform to facilitate the development of software applications, products and solutions.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework
Well, what is the Laravel framework?
To offer a far more advanced solution to the CodeIgniter framework, Taylor Otwell developed and now manages the open-source Laravel PHP web framework. Its building features are mostly taken from Symfony.
After the release of version 3, which added features like the Command Line Interface known as Artisan, support for the Database system, and migrations, this framework saw an increase in popularity. Bundles, a new type of packaging, were also introduced.
In June 2011, the first reliable version of Laravel was made available. Version 5.6 of the stable software was published in February 2018, followed by version 5.7 in September 2018, 5.8 in February 2019, 7 in March 2020, and 9 in February 2022. Laravel developers are also among the most searched sort of programmers.
“Laravel went through some pretty significant changes from 4 to 5. I wouldn’t start with 4. The changes from 5.1 to 8 aren’t that significant. I can think of a couple of folder structure changes, but it’s mostly added features. The breaking changes between 5.1 to 8 aren’t too significant.”
- Michael Claar, Laravel developer at piesta.com on Qoura.com
Why Laravel?
Here, we’ll go over some of the Laravel framework’s intriguing features that will help to explain why it is becoming so popular among developers.
Laravel – the PHP framework for web artisans
- MVC Support
- Built-in Authentication & Authorization
- Packaging System
- Multiple File System
- Artisan Console
- Eloquent ORM
- Template Engine
- Task Scheduling
- WebSocket Programming
- Testing
MVC Support
The first and foremost benefit of using the Laravel framework is that it adheres to the Model, View, and Controller-based architectural style and has a simple, expressive syntax, making it object-oriented.
Built-In Authentication & Authorization
For the Authentication and Authorization system, Laravel offers a pre-configured setup. Your application will have protected Authentication and Authorization in just a few instructions.
Packaging system
A packaging system takes care of the various auxiliary programs or libraries that enable the web app to automate the procedure. To maintain all the data required to manage packages, Laravel utilizes a composer for dependency management. Furthermore, packages offer the functionality we need right out of the box, which is an excellent method to speed up development. Some top Laravel packages are Image, Laravel Debug bar, and Laravel IDE aid.
Multiple File System
Laravel includes built-in support for local storage and cloud storage services like Amazon S3 and Rack space Cloud Storage. Since the API is the same for each system, switching between different storage alternatives is remarkably easy. Therefore, to serve files from many places, like in a distributed environment, one can employ all three technologies together in a single application.
Artisan Console
The command line interface for Laravel is called Artisan. Artisan is frequently used to manage database migrations, publish package assets, and produce code for new controllers, models, and migrations. The developer can avoid writing correct code skeletons because of this functionality. Adding additional custom commands can increase Artisan’s functionality and capabilities.
Eloquent ORM
The built-in ORM implementation in Laravel is called Eloquent. Compared to other frameworks, Laravel offers the best object-relational mapper. Due to this object-relational mapping, you can use expressive syntax to communicate with your database relationships and objects.
Templating Engine
Blade Template Engine is the default template engine included with Laravel. By converting the templates into cached PHP code for better performance, the Blade templating engine joins one or more templates with a data model to generate the final views. Moreover, additional control structures offered by Blade include conditions and loops, which are internally mapped to their PHP versions.
Task Scheduling
The Artisan command-line tool now includes Scheduler, which enables programmatic scheduling of tasks that are carried out on a regular schedule. The Scheduler was first introduced in Laravel 5.0. The Scheduler internally uses the cron daemon to launch a single Artisan job, which then performs the configured tasks.
Events and Broadcasting
To incorporate real-time data, show live feeds, etc., in current online applications, Laravel provides a notion called broadcasting. Therefore, You can access real-time data from the program by using broadcasting, enabling you to share the same event name between the server and client sides of your application.
Testing
When it comes to testing the application, Laravel, by default, offers the unit test for the app, which also includes tests to find and end framework regressions. Although, In a Laravel application, integrating PHP unit tools like a testing framework is relatively simple. Additionally, using the artisan command-line tool, unit tests can be executed.
Official packages of Laravel
Cashier:
In Laravel 4.2, Cashier was released. It has APIs for managing Stripe’s subscription billing services, including handling coupons and creating invoices.
Socialite:
With the introduction of Socialite in Laravel 5.0, several social networks like Google, Facebook, and Bitbucket now have a more straightforward authentication process. As a result, your application can quickly and effectively deploy these socialite logins. Envoy gives you a chance to automate routine processes with a minimal amount of syntax. Moreover, It employs a syntax similar to the Blade template to quickly build up deployment tasks, Artisans commands, and many other things.
Horizon:
The usage of Horizon for queue monitoring is made possible by its excellent dashboard and code-driven setup. Therefore, the primary goals of Horizon are to track job failures, monitor job output, and measure execution time.
Passport:
Utilizing an OAuth server and Passport, users are authenticated via API AS API does not maintain the HTTP session. APIs often use the token to verify the user’s identity, and Laravel Passport quickly implements the entire OAuth server for web applications.
Scout:
Scout is a pre-built Laravel package for full-text search utilizing Eloquent models. Angola is the standard driver used for full-text search and offers excellent service. However, you can use another driver as a custom driver since it is simple and can increase searching capability.
Conclusion
These Laravel frameworks’ out-of-the-box features are ideal for developing web applications of all sizes, from minor to corporate. Moreover, it offers a wealth of built-in features that make it simple for developers to work. Furthermore, the official packages provided by Laravel are like the icing on the cake. This has made Laravel popular among developers, and people can’t do anything about it but love it. Want your project to be built on the Laravel framework? Feel free to contact us
The post Why Do Developers Love Laravel Framework? first appeared on Devfor.
