There is no denying the fact that PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages among web developers across the world for certain obvious reasons – ease of use, flexibility, versatility and security. However, coding in PHP often gets rather repetitive and monotonous. This is where PHP frameworks come into play. They are designed to streamline the development process of web applications coded in PHP by rendering a basic architecture. In simpler words, PHP frameworks boost the web development process while reducing the amount of repetitive coding for web developers.
PHP frameworks can also assist novices in building more stable applications by ensuring precise database communication and coding on the presentation layer. This enables you to spend time building innovating web applications instead of doing the monotonous job of writing the same code.
When it comes PHP frameworks, there are a wide variety of frameworks available to choose such as Aura, Yii, Phalcon, Zend Framework 2, Symfony, CakePHP, Codeigniter and more. With so many options to choose from, it gets quite difficult and confusing for beginners to make the right decision of choosing the PHP framework that satisfies their requisites. And immediately with that thought pops the question – which is the easiest to learn?
Well, if you are completely new to PHP and PHP frameworks, you probably should learn PHP first. Because when it comes to learning to write code, there is nothing easy. You still have write code, create objects and make functions get your web application work.
Having said that, among all PHP Frameworks available out there, Laravel is one framework that is easier to learn and implement as compared to other frameworks such as Codeigniter and Symfony. But still, as we mentioned, you need to have advanced knowledge of PHP to get started with Laravel or any other PHP framework.
What is Laravel?
As a PHP framework, Laravel is a relatively new, free and open source platform developed for web artisans. It comes with an elegant and expressive syntax to make things a lot easier for the web developer. Some of the most useful features of Laravel include a variety of ways to access relational database utilities, a dedicated dependency manager, and a modular packaging system. Laravel is designed to be developer-friendly, easy to understand and implement that seamlessly supports quick application development. The Laravel source code is licensed under the terms of MIT License and hosted on Github.
It has also managed to gain credibility and amazing support from developers around the world in its vibrant developer community support.
Let’s see why you should choose Laravel for your next web application project.
1. Innovative Founder
The PHP framework is created by Taylor Otwell in 2012 and since then he has left no stone unturned to make it one of the most dominant PHP frameworks on the internet. Taylor has been continually pushing out creative products to support his product and help people use it to its full potential.
Some of these examples include Laravel Spark, a SAAS template developed in Laravel and Lumen, an uber-fast micro-framework. Just like any other big player in the web industry, Laravel has really managed to be an important part of the web development field, all thanks to Taylor Otwell.
2. The power of Documentation
Taylor Otwell, apart from building a powerful and invincible framework, has also invested his time in writing the documentation of the framework himself to help developers from all walks of life to build web applications easily with Laravel. Whether you are a Laravel beginner or an experienced developer, this documentation is written to help at every step of your web application development. The documentation, which is available on the official website of Laravel i.e. https://laravel.com/, is written in the simple English language for making things more digestible even by a beginner. The docs also contain a section listing of all the Laravel validators available.
3. Dependency Injection made Simple
Dependency Injection has been a buzzword in the PHP web development industry. In fact, it is a frequent subject of discussion among a majority of web developers. Dependency injection is often recommended when you are working on long-term projects or have a higher scope. When it’s not used, changing a simple class results in a cascade of other changes in other classes since everything is associated with one another, eventually resulting in various bugs. However, dependency injection enables you to get rid of concrete class by coding to a contract, allowing you to easily swap out changes with little to no impact on the code. It is focused on the concept of loose coupling of classes which help you make your code simpler and extensible to maintain.
Laravel is one platform that has made dependency injection a lot easier. The platform adheres to the principles of loose-coupling in an extremely instinctive way, making things simpler.
4. Large Application structure
Laravel features a large application structure that is created to render a good starting point for both small and large application development. It gives you the freedom to organize your application the way you want it. Moreover, it does not impose any restrictions on where any of your class is placed provided composer can autoload it. The application structure of Laravel includes The Root Directory and The App Directory.
The root directory of Laravel application structure includes various folders and files including
• app
• bootstrap
• config
• database
• public
• resources
• storage
• test
• vendor
And more.
The app directory of Laravel ships with various additional directories such as Providers, Http, and Console.
The application structure of this platform is a little complex to understand at first, but once you get a hang of it, it gets easier to understand and implement it in your project.
5. Libraries and Configuration
Laravel comes with a huge database of libraries and configuration to help the web developer build a unique and safe web app. The variety of development environments helps Laravel to adapts as per the accurate platform where the application is running. This is basically possible due to the libraries authorization incorporated inside.
Conclusion:
Apart from the above-mentioned reasons of choosing Laravel, there are various other reasons that persuade you to choose it for your next web app development projects such as vibrant community support, open source code, and lightweight structure.
So, if you are still deciding on the PHP framework, Laravel is a good consideration.
I hope you find this article useful and if you have anything to share, you can always get in touch with us in the comments section below.
Hi,
It is good introduction and concept clearing information for LAVAREL framework which gaining popularity.
Good work.