Advantages of using Laravel for web development
Introduction
Laravel is one of the popular and highly rated open-source PHP-based web frameworks used to develop complex web applications It is used by over 40,000 companies and powers around 1.7M websites worldwide. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern of organizing code into 3 main components with the model representing the data layer and business logic, the view presenting the user interface, and the controller acting as a communication between the model and view handling input and data flow. Read the post further to know about the advantages that Laravel offers over other web frameworks which makes it a highly effective option.
Advantages of using Laravel
Fast-paced development
Laravel offers elegant syntax which makes web development easy and quick for developers. The built-in tools help developers handle common web development tasks like routing, caching, etc., and save time with ready-made solutions. In addition to its Artisan, Laravel’s Command Line Interface helps automate repetitive tasks like creating boilerplate code for controllers, models, etc., streamlining the whole development process.
Robust security features
Laravel offers protection against various commonly encountered security threats through various features and rate limiting. It uses Bcrypt and Argon2 hashing algorithms for password storage, making it challenging for attackers to reengineer passwords even with hashed data. Laravel also uses a crypt facade to encrypt and decrypt data via OpenSSL and AES-256, ensuring the security of sensitive data.
Eloquent ORM
Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapping) is Laravel’s database interaction layer which simplifies developer’s interaction by providing an object-oriented interface allowing developers to perform database operations without complex SQL queries.
Authentication and authorization systems
Laravel provides robust built-in authentication and authorization packages with controllers and views.
The authentication system makes it easy for developers to handle user registration, login, and logout functionalities with starter kits like Laravel Breeze and Jetstream. Web and API guards can be used to define session-based and token-based authentication respectively. The system also includes authentication middleware restricting access to certain routes for only authenticated users.
Authorization systems can be used to control the actions of a user in the application through gates and policies, the former is used to define authorization logic for certain actions and the latter to organize the authorization logic around specific models like post or user model.
Rich Ecosystem and integration with third-party services
Laravel’s rich ecosystem is one of its standout features offering numerous tools, packages, and libraries extending its functionality and simplifying the development process.
Laravel’s flexible architecture and configuration support allow easy integration with various diverse third-party services like payment gateways, email, SMS services, cloud storage, and more.
Flexible routing
Flexible routing in Laravel allows developers to control how application URLs are structured, organized, and managed and is suitable for building simple as well as complex applications. It allows many options like naming for reference, including constraints for restricting parameters, caching for better performance, and more.
Testing and debugging
Laravel offers a complete suite of tools for testing and debugging applications. PHPUnit offered in Laravel facilitates testing individual components and the whole workflow. It also provides Laravel Dusk for conducting end-to-end tests for front-end components, Laravel Telescope for monitoring and debugging, and Debugbar for debugging SQL queries and tracking application performance.
Conclusion
With numerous advantages like flexible three-layer architecture, quick development process, rich ecosystem, eloquent ORM, robust security features, and more, there is no doubt that Laravel is a leading and rapidly growing PHP-based web framework. Hope this post provided you with the information about what Laravel brings to the table over other frameworks.