Laravel: A free, open-source PHP web framework

Based on Model–View–Controller Architecture

In this article, you will find essential information about Laravel. Laravel is an open-source web framework alternative of CodeIgniter. This article contains general definition, brief history, features and applications of Laravel.

There has been a boom in the development and usage of PHP based frameworks. PHP web frameworks have been the most popular for supporting web application development. Laravel web development has tremendous importance when it is used in the development of web applications using the Model-View-Controller architecture pattern. Because of this, Laravel has enabled the development of superior personalized web applications for many different organizations present around the globe. Because of the simplicity that is provided by Laravel, the coding experience leads to be flawless code with the least extent of being incorrect.

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP framework, which is robust and easy to understand. It follows a model-view-controller design pattern and based on Symfony. Laravel reuses the existing components of different frameworks which helps in creating a web application. The web application thus designed is more structured and pragmatic.

Some of the features of Laravel are a modular packaging system with a dedicated dependency manager, different ways for accessing relational databases, utilities that aid in application deployment and maintenance, and its orientation toward syntactic sugar.

Model–View–Controller

Model–View–Controller (usually known as MVC) is a software design pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divide the related program logic into three interconnected elements. This is done to separate internal representations of information from the ways information is presented to and accepted from the user. This kind of pattern is used for designing the layout of the page.

Advantages

1. The web application becomes more scalable, owing to the Laravel framework.
2. Considerable time is saved in designing the web application since Laravel reuses the components from other frameworks in developing web application.
3. It includes namespaces and interfaces, thus helps to organize and manage resources.

Brief History:-

Taylor Otwell created Laravel as an attempt to provide a more advanced alternative to the CodeIgniter framework, which did not provide certain features such as built-in support for user authentication and authorization. Laravel’s first beta release was made available on June 9, 2011, followed by the Laravel 1 release later in the same month. Laravel 1 included built-in support for authentication, localisation, models, views, sessions, routing and other mechanisms, but lacked support for controllers that prevented it from being a true MVC framework.

Current version:- Laravel 7 was released on March 3, 2020, with new features like Laravel Sanctum, Custom Eloquent Casts, Blade Component Tags, Fluent String Operations and Route Model Binding Improvements.

Features Of Laravel:-

1. Modularity

Laravel provides 20 built-in libraries and modules which helps in enhancement of the application. Every module is integrated with the Composer dependency manager which eases updates.

2. Testability

Laravel includes features and helpers which helps in testing through various test cases. This feature helps in maintaining the code as per the requirements.

3. Routing

Laravel provides a flexible approach to the user to define routes in the web application. Routing helps to scale the application in a better way and increases its performance.

4. Configuration Management

A web application designed in Laravel will be running on different environments, which means that there will be a constant change in its configuration. Laravel provides a consistent approach to handle the configuration in an efficient way.

5. Query Builder and ORM

Laravel incorporates a query builder which helps in querying databases using various simple chain methods. It provides ORM (Object Relational Mapper) and ActiveRecord implementation called Eloquent.

6. Schema Builder

Schema Builder maintains the database definitions and schema in PHP code. It also maintains a track of changes with respect to database migrations.

7. Template Engine

Laravel uses the Blade template engine, a lightweight template language used to design hierarchical blocks and layouts with predefined blocks that include dynamic content.

8. E-mail

Laravel includes a mail class which helps in sending mail with rich content and attachments from the web application.

9. Authentication

User authentication is a common feature in web applications. Laravel eases designing authentication as it includes features such as register, forgot password and send password reminders.

10. Redis

Laravel uses Redis to connect to an existing session and general-purpose cache. Redis interacts with session directly.

11. Queues

Laravel includes queue services like emailing a large number of users or a specified Cron job. These queues help in completing tasks in an easier manner without waiting for the previous task to be completed.

12. Event and Command Bus

Laravel 5.1 includes Command Bus which helps in executing commands and dispatch events in a simple way. The commands in Laravel act as per the application’s lifecycle.

Applications:-

Laravel provides a clean, simple API over the popular SwiftMailer library. Laravel also provides drivers for SMTP, Mailgun, Mandrill, SparkPost, Amazon SES, PHP’s “mail” function, and “sendmail”, allowing an application to quickly get started sending mail through a local or cloud-based service. In addition, to support for sending an email, Laravel provides support for sending notifications across a variety of delivery channels, including SMS (via Nexmo) and Slack.

Laravel helps to secure the web application by protecting it against the most serious security risks: SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, and cross-site scripting. Laravel itself is secure. We can tell you first hand that the codebase is fanatically guarded, and that the code has been vetted by several people.

All Laravel routes are defined in the app/Http/routes.php file, which is automatically loaded by the framework. The most basic Laravel routes simply accept a URI and a Closure, providing a very simple and expressive method of defining routes.

Laravel mainly use in

1. Web applications
2. Web-based APIs
3. Mail service integration