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Since its conception in the mid-90s, PHP has been one of the most highly-popular web development languages out there. In fact, according to a survey by BuiltWith, more than 22 million live websites on the internet are powered by PHP.
So you can imagine how beneficial it would be to choose a PHP framework for the initial stages of your web application project. Every development team follows certain selection criteria before choosing the perfect framework. Some of the critical factors include:
- Team’s experience with the framework
- The popularity of the framework
- Cost of development
- Customization and scalability capabilities
- In-built security features.
Other than the ones listed above, you must also consider the deployment, third-party integration, testing approaches, etc.
If you look at the statistics, Laravel, at present, is one of the best, most popular frameworks compared to others based on PHP. According to BuiltWith, it powers more than 750K live websites on the internet. Moreover, it gets over 71,000 stars on GitHub, which might be enough to show you how popular this PHP framework is.
Although there are several PHP frameworks, it would be better to go for Laravel for your project.
In this blog, we’ll see what Laravel is and why you should choose it for web and application development.
What is Laravel?
Launched in June 2011, Laravel is a free, open-source platform you can use to develop the back-end of web applications with the help of its extensive range of syntaxes. Moreover, it is one of the best PHP frameworks with a powerful architecture along with a collection of tools to make the development process more effortless.
The latest Laravel version incorporates new features with respect to localization, views, routing, authentication, models, sessions, etc. Then there are updated features like an inversion of control, integrated database management system support, and Blade template engine. There’s also packaging mechanism known as bundles, support for managing events, and a command line interface called Artisan.
Now, we’ll see why you should choose Laravel as your preferred PHP framework.
Why Choose Laravel?
Laravel can provide you with some of the best features that can help improve the web applications and websites’ appearance, functionalities, performance, and security
Here are a few of the reasons you should choose the Laravel framework:
#1. MVC & Object-Oriented Architecture
Object-oriented model-view-controller architecture is an excellent feature of the Laravel framework. It helps Laravel developers by separating the presentation layers from the important business logic. Thanks to this feature, Laravel has some excellent built-in functionalities, excellent security, and enhanced application speed and performance.
Laravel provides a range of syntaxes, making it object-oriented for the benefit of expert developers.
#2. Default Authentication & Authorization
One of the most significant features of Laravel is the efficient authentication and authorization. They evaluate the time it may take a developer to create a new web application. Moreover, the logical technique in this framework provides access to the resources and helps the Laravel developers reform the authorization logic.
It also features application reasoning giving the developers flexibility to work on software of any size.
#3. Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapping)
With this feature, developers can easily interface with the database with the help of ActiveRecord implementation offered by the Laravel Eloquent ORM. It saves time, effort, and resources. So the developers can easily create the database queries with the help of PHP syntax, rather than writing and understanding SQL to monitor and update the databases. With the eloquent ORM, you’ll need to invest little to no time and effort in developing object-oriented structures. Moreover, you’ll have a built-in library to infuse added functionality in an application, along with comprehensive object-oriented programming.
#4. Automated Unit Testing
You cannot say for sure if your web application is bug-free and within the necessary requirements without running a comprehensive test on it. That’s why the testing protocols are among the most significant features of the Laravel framework.
Automated unit testing also ensures the speed and performance of your website or application through a thorough test in less time compared to other frameworks. Moreover, its expressive testing helps you imitate natural human behavior with actions like analyzing outputs, making requests, clicking forms, etc. It also detects and prevents regressions in the framework to improve the results on the websites or applications.
#5. Artisan Console
Artisan is Laravel’s built-in command line interface, a few uses of which are:
- Managing database migrations
- Publishing package assets
- Generating boilerplate codes for new models, controllers, and migrations.
Moreover, you can even extend the capabilities and functionalities of the Artisan Console through new custom commands.
#6. Better Website Performance
Laravel offers easy-to-implement speed optimization techniques like website caching. Plus, memory use reduction and database indexing can help further improve the performance of the website. So if you are focusing on website speed and SEO-friendliness, Laravel would be an excellent choice.
#7. Flexible
Laravel is quite a powerful framework used to create everything from professional B2B websites to comprehensive eCommerce applications and websites. Other than its extensive collection of pre-installed authorization libraries, there are several third-party packages that can help developers add some of the best features, including encryption and password reset.
Laravel’s flexibility also means it is compatible with different operating systems, including macOS, Linux, Windows, UNIX, etc. That’s why it is often used to develop cross-platform web applications.
#8. Blade Template Engine
One of the benefits of using Laravel Blade is the Templating Engine, which comes pre-equipped with the core platform. It lets you use plain PHP code in views while adding zero overhead to your application and combines the data model with multiple templates to ensure the best outcome while improving performance. Other than providing general PHP shortcuts, Blade offers template inheritance to make the web development process even more flexible.
#9. Open Source & Large Community
Laravel is an open-source platform and has a large, powerful community that constantly introduces new features to make the platform more flexible, secure, and powerful. It also means that in case of an issue, you can reach out to developers in the community to determine the best solution.
#10. Events & Broadcasting
The broadcasting option in Laravel is used by developers in modern web applications and websites to show live feeds, implement real-time data, etc. It helps share the event names between the client and server side for real-time data acquisition.
#11. Security
Security is one of the biggest points of concern with any website or application, no matter the size of the business. Fortunately, Laravel has several security features including HTTP middleware, input sanitization, encryption, rate limiting, password hashing, etc. These features help protect your website and application from attacks and unauthorized access.
However, Laravel introduces new security features regularly. But it’s very important you update Laravel to its latest version to ensure your website or application is secured with the latest features.
So if you want to create a website or web application, choosing Laravel would be the way to go. Now, it may be possible that you are not proficient enough in programming to create applications or websites through Laravel. Then hiring a Laravel development company would be a great choice.
Popular Laravel Combinations
Experts use several frameworks in combination with Laravel to develop the best web applications. A few of these framework combinations are as follows:
Laravel + Vue.js
The JavaScript framework Vue.js is used to develop interactive UIs for websites and web applications. Laravel offers built-in support for Vue.js, which makes it easier for developers to use this framework combination to develop advanced, client-side applications.
Laravel + Angular
Angular is generally used by developers to create single-page applications or SPAs. Subsequently, you can use Laravel to develop the back-end of a web application, while the back-end can be developed with Angular. It ensures a more powerful, full-stack application with the ability to process significant amounts of traffic and data.
Laravel + BootStrap
Bootstrap is a common front-end web development framework that can be used in combination with Laravel to develop mobile-friendly, responsive applications with consistent, excellent-looking designs.
Laravel + AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the most popular cloud computing platforms, offers to host, store, and data processing services, and can be used in combination with Laravel to create dependable, expandable websites and web applications.
Laravel + Git
Usually, Git is used in tracking the changes in the code and partnering up with other developers. Moreover, you can use Git in conjunction with Laravel to deploy and implement the changes to the web applications.
These are just a few of the popular Laravel framework combinations to create powerful, secure, feature-rich websites and web applications.
In a nutshell
As mentioned before, Laravel is used by more than 750K websites around the world. It offers some of the best features of any framework, like Artisan, Blade Template Engine, Automated Unit Testing, Event & Broadcasting, etc. So more and more companies are opting for this framework and even looking to hire outsourcing Laravel development agencies for the same.
At last, Laravel is one of the popular PHP frameworks that offer several advantages to developers, including expressive syntax, MVC Architecture, strong Testing, and Debugging tools, an active community, several built-in features, etc. That’s why Laravel is an ideal choice for developing web applications quickly and efficiently.
If you want to get the best of this framework for your website, hire dedicated Laravel developers with us today!
