The Laravel PHP framework is an innovation in the world of software development. It allows custom web app development following an MVC pattern. Developed by Taylor Otwell in 2011, the framework is increasingly rising the ranks among other PHP frameworks due to its agile development approach.
Laravel offers many benefits and robust features to build stable apps and websites faster. Plus, these software applications are incredibly easy to maintain and upgrade with a modular and extensible code that is convenient to understand for expert or amateur developers.
If you’re looking for more reasons for switching to the Laravel framework, read on below. The blog covers what Laravel is and how it can give your app a competitive edge:
Laravel is an open-source framework designed to create web applications based on Symfony, using the MVC architectural pattern. It offers various features that make it a preferred option for developers. With an exceptional API, you can speed up the development process, streamline a 3-page pamphlet site, and more.
It first came to light in 2011 and since then has continued to evolve with upgraded versions offering new features released every year. Laravel 1 was designed as an alternative to CodeIgniter with built-in support for authentication, models, localization, views, routing, sessions, and other mechanisms.
However, Laravel 1 lacked the support for controllers, which restricted it from being an authentic MVC framework. Laravel 2 was an improvement, but it wasn’t until the release of Laravel 3 that the platform had a substantial user base with new features, including a command-line interface, support for database management systems, and more.
After Laravel 3 came many versions with various upgrades, the latest being Laravel 7, released on March 3rd, 2020. It offers features like Laravel Airlock, Blade Component Tags, Custom Eloquent Casts, Route Model Binding Improvements, and Fluent String.
Now that we know how the Laravel PHP framework came to be let’s see how it can help you with your web app development project.
Here are some of the benefits of Laravel and the reasons for its rising popularity. It’s how it can guarantee a web app unlike any other in the market.
The owner of the web apps needs to know that no unauthorized user gains access to the secured, paid resources. Laravel provides a straightforward solution for implementing authentication. With the framework, you can conveniently organize authorization logic and control entry to a resource database.
One aspect of Laravel that tempts businesses is that it speeds up the development, shortening the time to market the app. It supports caching backend, which is needed for improving the performance of web apps. Laravel’s default configuration is set to using the file cache driver, ideal for small projects, but you can construct multiple cache configuration.
Security concerns accompany all software, including web apps. Laravel is renowned for its top-grade cybersecurity measures. It offers protection against the most critical security vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery. Laravel itself is infinitely more secure than other frameworks with a closely guarded codebase, that’s vetted by the community.
Integrating web apps with mail services enables your users to receive email notifications for successful registration, promotional offers, announcements, and more. Laravel offers a straightforward API over the SwiftMailer library as well as drivers for SMTP, Mandrill, Mailgun, Amazon SES, SparkPost, and PHP’s “mail” function, and “sendmail.”
It allows the app to send email alerts via a cloud-based or local service instantly. Additionally, Laravel also supports notifications through other channels, including SMS and Slack.
Error handling has a significant impact on the user experience of the app. Your software’s response determines users’ satisfaction, the app’s performance, and usability.
Data-entry forms are where errors most commonly come up after users enter incorrect information. In such cases, users need to be informed of the error via an informative error message. Otherwise, they would assume the problem lies with the app and stop using it.
With Laravel, new projects are by default configured with error and exception handling features. Plus, the framework is integrated with the Monolog logging library that supports various log handlers.
Testing is essential to ensure your web app works as intended and offers an excellent user experience. Without testing, developers cannot identify and fix bugs, errors, system crashes, and more. Laravel offers in-built features that automate testing.
A PHPUnit is included out-of-the-box, and a phpunit.xml file is preinstalled for web apps. Additionally, it allows developers to simulate users’ behavior for animated testing of the applications. For example, requesting the web app and analyzing the output by clicking links and filling out forms.
By separating the logic code from the presentation code, your HTML layout designers can easily alter the webpage design without the need for Developers, who are more expensive of the two. Furthermore, developers can finish feature requests and fix bugs much faster if the codebase is separated at the early stages of development.
Laravel, however, is an MVC framework. Meaning, the separation is already done.
All web apps need a system to schedule tasks or clean up the database automatically. Laravel removes the need to generate a Cron entry to schedule tasks daily and add multiple Cron entries into the server. Instead, its command scheduler allows developers to define the command schedule within the framework, with only one Cron entry required for the server.
With more traffic coming to your web application, you want a system to balance the increasing load, keep data integrity, and maintain performance speed. That’s where a message queue system plays a role!
Laravel queue service has a unified API across various queue backends. Queues defer the processing of lengthy tasks until later, which speeds up the performance of the web app and requests received per minute.
I hope the blog helps you understand how the Laravel framework can benefit web app development. Not only does it speed up development, but it makes the entire process easier for the web.
Use the Laravel PHP framework for your next web app idea. Leverage its excellent features and ensure you provide your users with the best functionality and user experience.
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