Everyone loves PHP: it’s been here for almost three decades and, during that time, has gained the title of the most beloved web development language out there. And if there is one framework that deserves to be called its most popular framework, it’s probably Laravel. So if you want to hire Laravel developers, but don’t know if that’s the right choice, keep on reading.
Well, you don’t need to read on much, to be honest, because our message is pretty clear: Laravel is the best PHP framework and full stop. But if you want to learn why we’re so sure about it, we’ll explain.
But first, let’s go through some definitions.
What is Laravel?
Laravel is an open-source, 100% free PHP web framework developed by Taylor Otwell to help create web applications based on Symfony and following the model-view-controller architectural pattern. It is also known for its elegant and expressive syntax, which makes development way more pleasant.
Let’s go through a brief history of Laravel.
Let’s time travel back to 2012. The PHP framework market is an absolute mess: there was no single framework that would be accepted by the majority of developers. Instead, different frameworks were competing with each other, boasting about their features, but none of them were really the solution the developers were looking for.
Approximately at this time, Taylor Otwell, who was using the CodeIgniter, realized that his desired features did not exist, and he needed to mangle the internal code of a framework to get them. So instead, he decided to create something much simpler, leaner, and more flexible.
Besides, there are a bunch of issues in PHP that had to be solved too. For instance, PHP did not really warn you or catch your code errors while you were writing the code, so in a way, you could continue to work on a poor code forever without even realizing it.
Taylor decided to fix it all and create a simple framework that would be the go-to for all the developers. This is how Laravel was born.
Fast forward to 2021, where Laravel is the best-known PHP framework, and most alternatives do not even come close to it. So why exactly is Laravel so popular today? We’ll explain it all right now:
Why Laravel is the best PHP framework?
Here are some of the features that make Laravel such a good choice:
- Heightened performance with the MVC architecture
MVC stands for the Model View Controller, and it is the architecture used in Laravel. With MVC, development is effortless, and you have a good base to develop both small and large applications.
Let’s say you have a pretty big project with more than five files. MVC will make it easy to organize all of them, helping you keep your maintenance and work with the project more efficiently.
If MVC was not there, you would probably lose the code structure, and the project could get all messed up.
- Stunning layouts with the template engine
No matter what web application you are working with, you will most probably have to deal with a lot of data in the text format. And to help you avoid that, you’ll need template engines.
Laravel offers the Blade Template Engine, a lightweight and powerful preset template that helps make your development process easier and faster.
Most importantly, it comes with some excellent layouts. By the way, using the Blade Template Engine, you can display data and extensions of your layouts without affecting your application’s performance or speed.
And if you don’t like the default layouts, you could also develop yours using the Content Seeding feature.
- Quick and simple commands with Artisan CLI
The Command Line Interface (CLI_ of Laravel makes the development of your apps pretty effortless. It also has some of the Symfony Console components to make the building process even more efficient.
If you’re unfamiliar with Symfony Console, it is one of the most helpful database management and data migration tools. It helps you build models, skeleton codes, controllers, and more.
Finally, the Artisan Tool also eliminates manual coding, speeding up the overall development process.
So, if you are looking for the best PHP framework, you don’t need to think much: Laravel is all you need. Although there might be frameworks that will beat it in the future, today, it gets the most market share of the PHP frameworks, making PHP developers’ lives easier.
