The official code of Laravel is “love beautiful code? We do too.” It is a very efficient and robust PHP framework popularly adopted by developers to ease out the pain in building complex web applications.
There are other options in the PHP framework space – CodeIgniter, Yii, Phalcon, etc., but since its launch, Laravel has been topping the list of best PHP frameworks, thanks to its flexibility and MVC architecture.
PHP web development companies love the framework and have already given it 63.2k stars on GitHub.
Let's see the advantages of Laravel and why it is so popular.
What is Laravel?
Laravel is a PHP framework used to develop web applications. Its refined syntax facilitates a faster development process with all the complex code of PHP removed for developers. The redundant tasks like caching, authentication and others are no longer there, so devs can build functional features for businesses.
Laravel was built to make complex PHP coding simpler and faster. And it delivers on the promise.
Top Laravel features that make it popular
The PHP frameworks market space has too much competition, but Laravel has all the eyes in the game despite the tough competition. And the framework's features list helps to beat the other players.
1. MVC Architecture
MVC architecture makes it easy to separate presentation code from business logic code. This makes it easy to change the layout of a webpage without involving the developers. Also, fixing bugs and uploading updates are faster. MVC is responsible for making development with Laravel much quicker, flexible and cost-effective.
2. Huge community with open source feature
Many PHP frameworks have a licensing cost, but Laravel is an open-source framework, so it's free to use. It also has a crazy and active community that updates the framework to make it more advanced and scalable.
3. Object-oriented libraries
This framework has an abundance of built-in object-oriented libraries. These are pre-coded with unique features for developers to use on the go in web applications.
While these are some of the most admirable Laravel features, there are other reasons why companies go with the framework for web app development. So here is a sneak peek of the benefits of Laravel.
Benefits of using the Laravel framework
Laravel is so popular; sometimes, it's hard to grasp why. The reason is much simpler – it brings peace of mind for developers. But Laravel has much more to offer than ease of use, and these benefits are that Laravel has all the issues with PHP resolved and well tested.
For instance, to help developers build a bug-free web application, Laravel has integrated testing.
A list of all the Laravel benefits for a seamless development experience:
1. Faster time to market
Laravel works on a modular basis, i.e. the repetitive tasks are easy to execute. The framework has pre-built structures to build extensive web applications in the least amount of time. These features keep becoming better with the community improving the resources due to the open-source framework.
Such advancements make Laravel an economic framework. The development process becomes quick and intuitive. No need for writing long lines of codes, and thus the application delivery is faster.
2. Better authentication and authorization
Before Laravel, the PHP frameworks lacked a number of advanced alternative features like built-in user authentication support. And when Laravel made it extremely easy to complete user authentication, including login, registration and password, developers chose the framework for all projects. It is also easy to access control of resources and organize authorization logic.
3. No technical vulnerabilities
One primary concern of web application development is security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting and others. And if these are not taken care of from the beginning, the expenses to fix them keep rising.
Laravel offers secure web application products against the riskiest security issues. So the security of any application built with Laravel is reduced significantly—no threat from malware attacks, just a secure web app.
4. MVC architecture
The crown jewel of Laravel is its MVC architecture. It makes it the king of PHP frameworks for web application development.
With enhanced built-in capabilities for developers to build web apps, MVC architecture facilitates better documentation than other PHP frameworks.
5. Automated and unit testing
Without testing an application, how would anyone know the software is working, including the developers? It is required to make sure that the software has no bugs, errors and doesn't crash abruptly. Laravel has automation testing, which takes less time and is also more accurate than manual testing.
This is another prime benefit of Laravel that is built with testing in mind. The unit testing helps expressive testing of the web apps. It tests the application as per user behaviour by making requests to the application and analyzing the output. It also tests each module to ensure that the application is working well as a whole.
Automated testing helps devs build optimized applications with high performing, consistent code.
6. Automated task scheduling
Automating tasks during the development cycle is necessary, like sending emails, notifications to app users and cleaning up the database. Before Laravel, web developers had to generate enquiries for each task, but all of this is gone now.
Laravel has an automatic command scheduler which allows devs to express commands easily and schedule in the framework.
Along with saving time, the Laravel framework also offers a huge save on the cost of hosting.
7. Handling the traffic
When it comes to scalability and handling large volumes of traffic, Laravel never falls short. And it is going to be the case with every application out there; it is bound to grow and have traffic challenges.
If you are running a web application with large traffic, it has to deal with many requests every second. In terms of pricing, this means you will have to pay more for hosting or risk data loss if the server stops working.
Laravel framework has a message queue system for effectively managing traffic and maintaining smooth server operations. Along with this, the Laravel queue service provides a unified API that speeds up the request of applications, thus making the web app faster.
Laravel: a robust framework for the success of your web app
It is no surprise that Laravel is famous. The impressive framework has crispy features that outdo its predecessors. And the mixed cocktail of cost-effectiveness, efficiency, reduced development time creates the sweet spot for developers that make them pick Laravel over all other PHP frameworks.
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