Features of Laravel that make it the Best Framework
Published On - May 14, 2024
Laravel is a widely popular and commonly used open-source framework. It comes with a myriad of features like template engine, support for organising code with MVC architecture, strong security measures, a handy tool called Artisan, a system for managing databases, and more. These advanced features set it apart from other PHP frameworks and have made many businesses turn towards Laravel development over the other frameworks.
Laravel offers reliable and feature-rich solutions for building top-notch web applications. It is dedicated to following best practices, ensuring users get the most out of it while developing their projects effectively.
Laravel, known for its robust features, has revolutionised the field of web development. Developers rely on Laravel to enhance project efficiency, scalability, and maintainability. Using Laravel’s extensive toolkit, developers can effortlessly build complex web applications, benefiting from its intuitive syntax and strong security measures.
In this blog post, you will get to know the detailed features and advantages that Laravel offers.
What is the Laravel Framework?
Laravel is a widely recognised open-source PHP web framework celebrated for its clean syntax and developer-friendly features. It simplifies the process of building reliable and scalable web applications by offering an array of tools, libraries, and conventions.
Some notable Laravel features include a robust routing system, an expressive ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) for interacting with databases, built-in authentication systems, and a template engine called Blade, which focuses on code readability and maintainability.
Laravel follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, where Model, View, and Controller are the three main logical components. Each component manages specific aspects of application development. Originally used in desktop GUIs, MVC has become the go-to framework for scalable and adaptable web projects. Laravel also supports cutting-edge development approaches like API development and real-time communication through integration with technologies like WebSocket. Due to its active community, comprehensive documentation, and ecosystem of packages, Laravel web development is the preferred choice for programmers looking to enhance the development of web apps.
What is the Purpose of Laravel?
While no-code website builders are trusted for creating simple sites like online stores or portfolios, more complex projects may require coding with a framework. Laravel stands out as an excellent choice for building large-scale modern web projects due to its versatility and open-source nature. Businesses across various industries, including IT, banking, travel, entertainment, and retail, go for Laravel development for web application projects. With its adaptable backend architecture, Laravel enables developers to create a wide range of projects, including:
- Static and dynamic web pages
- Single-page applications (SPAs) and multi-page applications (MPAs)
- E-commerce websites
- Enterprise-level applications
- Portal web apps such as forums, job portals, news sites, and more
- Content management systems
Advantages of Laravel Development
Simplified Authorisation and Authentication:
Laravel offers simple methods for implementing authentication, ensuring that only authorised users access sensitive resources. It also provides a clear structure for organising authorisation logic and managing resource access.
Seamless Tool Integration:
Laravel seamlessly integrates with various tools to enhance app development and improve performance. Integration with popular caching backends like Redis and Memcached significantly boosts web app speed.
Effortless Mail Service Integration:
Laravel comes with built-in integration for Mail Services, facilitating the sending of notifications to users via email. Its intuitive API simplifies the process of sending emails through local or cloud-based services.
Effective Exception and Configuration Error Handling:
Proper handling of exceptions and configuration errors is crucial for maintaining app usability and user satisfaction. Laravel’s configuration includes default settings for error and exception handling, ensuring a smooth user experience and minimising the risk of losing customers.
Automated Testing:
Testing is crucial to ensure software functions smoothly without errors, bugs, or crashes. Automation testing is preferred over manual testing because it is more efficient. Laravel is designed with testing in mind, facilitating the process of ensuring the software’s reliability.
Separation of Business Logic and Presentation Code:
Separating business logic code from presentation code enables HTML designers to modify the appearance without needing developer involvement. This approach accelerates bug resolution by allowing developers to focus solely on business logic. Laravel’s adherence to the MVC architecture inherently facilitates this separation.
Addressing Common Technical Vulnerabilities:
Security vulnerabilities are a critical concern in web application development. Some of the key vulnerabilities are SQL injection and cross-site scripting. It is essential for developers to address these vulnerabilities before deploying their applications. Laravel is known for its robust security features, which help protect web applications against various security threats.
Task Scheduling Configuration and Management:
Web applications often need to perform tasks on a schedule, such as sending emails to subscribers or cleaning up database tables daily. Traditionally, developers would create a Cron entry for each task. However, Laravel simplifies this process with its command scheduler, allowing developers to define a single schedule on the server for all tasks.
Explore the Key Features of Laravel
Laravel, among the most popular frameworks, boasts a robust feature set. PHP, the oldest programming language, powers over 20 million websites, catering to businesses of all sizes. Laravel’s popularity is mainly because of its extensive functionalities, that make it a preferred choice for developers seeking powerful tools to build efficient web applications.
User Authentication:
User authentication stands as a crucial element in web applications, demanding considerable developer effort to craft robust authentication mechanisms. Laravel streamlines this process with its updated version, offering a simplified authentication process. With Laravel, an inbuilt authentication system is readily available, requiring only configuration of models, views, and controllers to ensure seamless application functionality.
Dynamic Templating:
Laravel introduces an innovative template engine that empowers developers to create dynamic websites effortlessly. Leveraging Laravel’s array of widgets, developers can construct sturdy architectural frameworks for their applications, enhancing flexibility and user experience.
Streamlined ORM:
Laravel boasts an integrated ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) system, facilitating seamless PHP Active Record implementation. This efficient ORM empowers developers to interact with database tables using straightforward PHP syntax, eliminating the need for manual SQL coding. By associating each table with its corresponding model, Laravel fosters seamless integration between developers and database structures, streamlining development processes.
MVC Architecture Compatibility:
Laravel is built upon the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, enabling accelerated development cycles. In the MVC paradigm, developers can concurrently handle different aspects of the application, one can focus on crafting the view while another can focus on formulating the business logic within the controller. This separation of concerns not only enhances development but also eliminates code duplication by delineating business logic from presentation logic, thereby enhancing code maintainability.
Robust Migration System:
Laravel features a robust migration system, enabling seamless database expansion without necessitating exhaustive developer intervention. The migration process in Laravel is meticulously designed to ensure security and integrity, minimising potential vulnerabilities. By leveraging PHP code throughout the migration process rather than direct SQL commands, Laravel enhances reliability and simplifies database management tasks.
Comprehensive Unit Testing:
Laravel boasts a comprehensive unit testing suite, allowing developers to execute a multitude of test cases to ensure the integrity of their web applications. With Laravel, developers have the flexibility to write custom test cases tailored to their specific needs, ensuring that any modifications made to the codebase do not compromise the application’s functionality.
Robust Security Measures:
Ensuring robust security measures is important in web application development, and Laravel excels in this regard. With built-in web application security features, Laravel reduces the burden on developers by autonomously safeguarding the application. Leveraging the “Bcrypt Hashing Algorithm,” Laravel encrypts passwords using salted hashes, thereby enhancing security by storing passwords as encrypted data in the database rather than plaintext.
Extensive Libraries and Modularity:
Laravel stands out for its rich assortment of object-oriented libraries and pre-installed modules, distinguishing it from other PHP frameworks. These pre-installed libraries include essential components such as authentication features, password reset functionalities, user activity monitoring, Bcrypt hashing capabilities, and CSRF protection. By embracing modular architecture principles, Laravel facilitates the development of responsive and modular applications, enabling developers to build scalable and efficient solutions.
Artisan Command-Line Interface:
Within the Laravel framework lies Artisan, a built-in command-line tool designed to streamline repetitive programming tasks, sparing PHP developers from manual labor. Artisan excels in automating various chores, including the creation of skeleton code, database structures, and their migrations, thus simplifying database management processes. Moreover, Artisan is adept at generating MVC (Model-View-Controller) files through command-line directives, ensuring rapid development cycles. Additionally, Artisan enables developers to create custom commands tailored to their specific project requirements, enhancing flexibility and efficiency in application development.
Automatic Pagination:
Laravel introduces an effortless pagination feature, streamlining the presentation of extensive datasets by automatically segmenting them into smaller, more digestible portions. This functionality proves invaluable in enhancing user experience, as it reduces load times and simplifies navigation, particularly when dealing with large volumes of data.
Advanced Laravel Routing:
Laravel’s routing system stands as a cornerstone of its advanced features, offering an elegant approach to defining application endpoints. This sophisticated routing mechanism simplifies the creation of RESTful APIs and other web applications by empowering developers to precisely dictate how the application should respond to specific requests.
Streamlined Web Application Caching:
Caching stands as a vital component in web application development, and Laravel offers native support for popular cache backends such as Redis and Memcached. While the file system serves as a reliable cache driver, leveraging an in-memory cache like APC or Memcached proves ideal for high-stakes applications.
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Conclusion
Having explored the myriad features of Laravel outlined above, it is evident why this framework has garnered immense popularity among developers and companies alike. Its seamless, innovative, and adaptable approach to solution-building sets it apart. With Laravel, developers can effortlessly craft dynamic, user-responsive websites featuring lightweight, customisable templates. Additionally, the framework boasts a plethora of useful plugins, robust object-relational mapping, and exceptional stability, ensuring an enhanced development experience.
Want to use Laravel for your next project? Get in touch with us at GetAProgrammer, an award-winning Laravel development company, and talk to our experts.
