Laravel is an open-source PHP framework. It is developed by Taylor Otwell as alternative to provide an advanced version of CodeIgniter. Its base architecture is based on symphony. It gains its popularity after it released its command-line knowns as artisan, migration feature and many other things in version 3. Its first stable version was released in 2011.
Why Laravel?
There are many reasons that why you should opt for Laravel, which I am going to list down:
1. MVC Support and Object-Oriented Approach
- One of the best advantages of using Laravel is, its Model-View-Controller Architecture pattern that has beautifully designed syntax which makes it object-oriented and easy to understand as a programmer
2. Built-in Authentication and Authorization
- This thing came out of the box Laravel provides configuration for the Authentication and Authorization system. It is one of the few artisan commands that Laravel is equipped with.
3. Packaging System
- Packaging system helps the web application to automate the processes by dealing with multiple support software and libraries. Composer is used as a dependency manager for managing the packages. This packaging accelerates development speed.
4. Multiple File System
- Laravel have multiple in-built cloud support like Amazon cloud, Rack Space Cloud and last but not the least local storage. Laravel’s file system can easily switch between these storages and you can also use them all together like distributed environment.
5. Artisan Console
- Laravel creator has made its own command-line interface (CLI) know as artisan. Artisan console is used to publishing packages, database migration, seeding, boilerplates code for model, controller and migration. Artisan command can be edited as per developer or user flexibility.
6. Eloquent ORM
- Eloquent ORM is one of the many features available in Laravel. It can be considered as one of the best mappers while comparing with the other php frameworks available in market. It allows users to easily interact with database by using expressive syntax.
7. Templating Engine
- Template engine is simple yet powerful. Contrasting like PHP template engine, Laravel blade template doesn’t restrict user from using plain PHP code in your template. They also provide conditional statements and loops, which are internally implemented.
8. Task Scheduling
- Task scheduler is a build-in feature of Laravel that was introduced in Laravel 5.0. It allows programmatic scheduling of periodically execution of tasks.
9. Events and Broadcasting
- This feature can be used in the modern web applications for implementing data, showing live feeds and many other things that require live updation. It pulls real-time data from applications and allows to share data from server-side to client-side.
10. Testing
Due to Laravel robustness testing become way easier for the tester to test the application. Its built-in feature itself contains tests that detect and prevent regressions in the framework. These tests can be easily run my artisan command.
Besides these features, Laravel also has some useful packages that accelerate development:
- Cashier: It handles subscription billing services, coupons and generating invoices.
- Socialite: It allows developers to ease integration of authentication mechanism from different social site like google, Facebook, etc.
- Horizon: It is used for monitoring the processes in the queue of the system. It executes the task and tracks the task failure.
- Passport: It is a type of authentication for APIs.