10 Reasons Why Laravel Is The Best PHP Framework

Laravel, one of the best PHP frameworks around, was developed in 2011 by Taylor Otwell, and it soon became popular among developers because it was a framework with a modern approach. A framework with a difference, because there was no single owner to it! A whole community of Laravel developers looked after it. And developers vouch for the efficacy of Laravel, citing that it can solve many of the problems faced by developers themselves. Laravel is contemporary; it is also thus open source, and is equipped with a plethora of learning resources, including a horde of learning tutorials.

Laravel grew to fame as an all-rounder, not as those typical CMS or Commerce frameworks. However, you can build perfect CMS or e-commerce web applications with this. Though considered a young framework, Laravel is equipped with all the features to create modern applications quickly, with all the security features incorporated in it. The framework was initially created for the MVC architecture, but it can also handle features like user authentication and event handling. The framework is well known for its package manager which allows developers to make modular and extensible codes, and provides robust support for database management.

Now, keeping these points in mind, it would be wise to go through some of the reasons why PHP is the best framework around.

10 Reasons

1. Laravel Comes With Its Own Template Engine – Blade

Laravel has Blade, its own template engine, which allows the developers to write their own plain PHP code. It also means the no performance overheads are introduced in the application. Blade is quite simple, yet provides a very powerful usage. This is driven by template sections and inheritance, quite unlike its controller layer counterparts. In case, you want to include one Blade template within another, you can combine some common HTML code into a single template, and use the @include statement.

2. Simple Way Of Implementing Authentication

Laravel makes the entire implementing of authentication very simple. Web application needs to verify the identity of users before providing them with services. This helps to prevent unauthorized people from gaining entry to their resources; to ensure safety. Laravel, with its out of the box configurations, has a simple way to organize authorization logic and control access to resources.

3. Laravel Is Secure In Nature

The security features of Laravel is superb. It prevents SQL injections through PHP Data Objects (PDO) parameter, Laravel’s Eloquent ORM. Laravel automatically generates CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) token for each active user session within the application. This is to help verify the authentication of the users, and another way to prevent malicious entry. Laravel uses salted and hashed password, which is mostly Bcrypt for storing all passwords. Bcrypt, with its built-in LoginController and RegisterControllerclasses, is automatically used for authentication and registration.

4. Configure Multiple Cache Configurations

Developers are always in the quest for making blazingly fast applications. They want something that can improve web application performance, and integration with caching backend can be one definite way to do this. Laravel supports Memcached and Redis, popular cache backends. The framework also has a default file cache driver, enabling it to store cached objects in the file system. And for larger applications too, Memcached and APC are the most commonly used ones. Laravel also makes it possible to configure multiple cache configurations.

5. Excellent Error And Exception Handling

Laravel comes with error and exception handling features configured into it. And it also comes integrated with Monolog logging library, thereby providing support for a variety of powerful log handlers. Through these features, Laravel helps improve the usability of the application, and users can enjoy seamless use of the app, minus the errors.

6. Automated Testing Provided

There is no point in releasing a product without testing it first. The app should come out minus the bugs, errors and crashes. Laravel comes with built-in testing features, complete with a phpunit.xml ingrained into it and convenient helper methods that allows for excessive testing of apps. It can stimulate the basic behaviour of users and experiments with the results, like filling out forms, for instance.

7. URL Routing Configuration

URL routing is an important feature in a web app because it allows the users to make use of the app’s features by clicking or typing links. The clicking or typing would lead to the opening of an article, a product description or a contact form. Laravel makes this very easy by using a simple and expressive method for defining routes. The routes are defined in the app/Http/routes.php file.

8. Excellent Authorisation

Laravel provides the best authorization techniques when compared to other PHP frameworks. It can brilliantly configure almost everything, and verifies HTTP requests before sending them to the controller. Authorization is done through two main ways – gates and policies, acting as routes and controllers.

9. Artisan Code Generation

Laravel comes equipped with a great command line tool known as Artisan. If you want to make a controller, you can try this on your command line — php artisan make:controller SampleController and press enter. The controller will be made instantly, and will be ready in the content folder. Migrations are also quite easy. All you need to do is php artisan make:migration add_is_admin_to_users_table and it will be done. The excellent documentation of Laravel plays a major role in making this easier.

10. Queue Service With Unified API

Laravel comes equipped with a queue service that provides a unified API across different kinds of queue backends. This would help in deferring time consuming tasks like sending an email, by watching the traffic in a web application. All forms of communication between different applications and among different parts of the same application will be handled efficiently.

The Bottom Line

What makes Laravel apart from other frameworks in its league is the expressive and elegant syntax that it is equipped with, according to developers who use this. This can ease up development process, making it possible for companies to launch apps as planned. Laravel makes it easier for developers to solve common tasks quickly, without the loss of quality, with the advantage of being able to focus faster on application logic (creative tasks).

Interesting links about the topic:
Top Reasons To Choose Laravel Over Other PHP Frameworks.
Why Laravel PHP Framework Is The Best For Web Development

Pictures: Flicker.com / mi0tch919


The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at www.Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.

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