If you’re interested in web development, you’ve likely asked yourself, “what is Laravel?” This open-source web application framework is an important part of web development, and it could be the perfect tool for your next project. Before you embark on any development project, you need to make sure that you are using the right tools for the job.
In this post, we will take an in-depth look at the Laravel framework from its beginnings to its advantages in web development, and finally, some of the projects that are best suited for this web application framework.
Read on to learn everything you will need to know about Laravel.
Laravel: The Beginnings
Laravel was created by a developer named Taylor Otwell and released to the public in 2011. His philosophy of web development is that it should be a fun and creative process. When developers are allowed to be creative and enjoy the work they are doing, the quality of their work is drastically improved.
With these thoughts in mind, he created a web application framework that possesses an elegant and expressive syntax and eases a number of common web development tasks. The result was Laravel. Laravel is a PHP framework that makes creating web applications fast and easy thanks to a number of built-in features and tools.
Laravel follows the MVC (model-view-controller) architecture and features a modular packaging system and a dedicated dependency manager. Since Laravel’s release, over one million websites have been built using the Laravel framework.
There is also a large online support community for Laravel since it is an open-source technology. This can be very helpful if you run into issues or need additional resources. Laravel is considered to be a pretty easy web application framework to learn, especially if you are already familiar with the programming language PHP.
The Advantages of Using Laravel
Laravel is not the only PHP framework that could be used in web development. Other popular PHP frameworks include CodeIgnitor, Zend Framework, and CakePHP. If there are so many options, why does Laravel tend to be one of, if not the most, popular PHP frameworks?
Laravel’s popularity in web development is due in large part to its simplicity and expressive syntax. Still, there are additional advantages that help Laravel stand out. Advantages of using the Laravel framework include:
- High performance
- Flexibility
- Traffic-Handling
- Security features
- Authentication
- Automated testing
- Pre-installed libraries
- Easy maintenance
High Performance
Performance is an important aspect of modern web app design and development. Web applications that don’t perform well will be abandoned in favor of ones that do. When building a web application, it is important to use tools that help aid overall performance. The Laravel framework ensures high performance by supporting:
- Caching
- Memory use reduction
- Database indexing
Website speed and performance are important SEO factors as well. If you want your web application to rank well in search engine results and retain users, you need to ensure that it performs well. Laravel makes it easy to ensure that performance is accounted for.
Flexibility
Flexibility is a valuable feature for a tool to have, especially when it comes to web development. Laravel is an extremely flexible PHP framework that can be used to create almost any website or web application you can think of. This web application framework comes loaded with a number of different libraries (which we will touch on in more detail later) and support for advanced features.
This means web developers can create large, complicated projects such as an eCommerce web application or smaller, simpler projects like a business website using the Laravel framework. Laravel’s flexibility makes it a valuable framework for developers to familiarize themselves with and learn.
Traffic-Handling
Compared to most other web application frameworks, Laravel is more adept at quickly handling website requests. This is an important feature of Laravel for businesses that want to grow their web traffic.
The Laravel framework utilizes a unique message queue system. This system allows certain types of web tasks to be put off or deprioritized in order to handle more pressing requests. By controlling the flow of requests, a Laravel application is able to process requests more quickly than most other web applications.
Traffic-handling not only helps create a more seamless User Interface, but it also can help your business lower its server costs over time.
Security Features
Security should always be a high priority for your business, especially when it comes to your digital assets. Losing sensitive data can be very damaging to your business. The Laravel framework makes implementing and configuring advanced security features easy.
Laravel provides a powerful ORM called Eloquent. This ORM helps protect your web assets from SQL injection attacks, which are the most common type of attacks you will face. This web application framework also uses a Bcrypt hashing algorithm. This means Laravel will never save passwords in the database of your website, where they could be accessed by bad actors.
Authentication
Authentication and user authorization are closely related to security and often require a number of labor-intensive hours to properly configure. Like other security features, implementing authentication features using the Laravel framework is easy. Almost every aspect of authentication is pre-configured right out of the box when you use Laravel.
The Laravel framework makes organizing authorization logic and controlling access to resources simple as well. It is important to make sure that unauthorized users are unable to gain access to your website or application.
Automated Testing
Testing is an important part of web development. Laravel was designed with testing in mind. Laravel supports testing out of the box and automatically creates a testing file at the beginning of any project. The Laravel framework also includes methods that allow developers to simulate user behavior.
Regular testing not only ensures that your website or application is secure from potential cyber-attacks but also helps your development team find and fix bugs before they can cause a poor user experience.
Pre-Installed Libraries
Libraries give developers the ability to easily include high-end features without having to code them by hand. In most cases, web application frameworks require you to download additional libraries to extend the functionality of your application. Laravel is one of the few frameworks that comes with pre-installed libraries.
This means you can start working on your website or application immediately without having to find additional libraries to download and install. This is one more example of how the Laravel framework reduces the amount of tedious, time-consuming tasks a developer must handle.
Easy Maintenance
Just because a project has been built does not mean it is over. Web development projects require ongoing maintenance in order to ensure that everything is working properly and securely. Usually, websites built with the Laravel framework are easy to maintain.
This is thanks in large part to the model, view, controller architecture, and the clean, simple code Laravel utilizes. Thinking about maintenance is important because it means that future developers should have no problem picking up where past developers left off.
The Projects Best Suited for Laravel
The Laravel framework can be used for just about any web development project if you have the right team of web developers. This flexibility is part of what makes Laravel a great web application framework to choose.
If you need help with your web development project, reach out to an app development partner. A partner can help you choose the right technology for your project and lend you industry experience and technical expertise as you work to create a digital product that benefits your business.
