What is Laravel? Advantages & Disadvantages

What is Laravel?

Laravel Framework is created by the Taylor Otwell which is a free open-source PHP web framework specially designed for the development of the web applications ensuring the MVC (model–view–controller) architectural pattern.

It is all based on the Symfony. There are more futures associated with the Laravel like modular packaging system with a dedicated dependency manager, utilities that aid in application deployment and maintenance and many more. In addition, there are many different ways of accessing relational databases and their orientation toward syntactic sugar. Moreover, GitHub is used to host the source code of Laravel and it is licensed under the terms of MIT license.

Taylor Otwell (Creator of Laravel Framework) developed Laravel as an alternative to the CodeIgniter framework, with features as inbuilt support for user authentication and authorization.

Advantages of using Laravel

1. New features of PHP can be used

The biggest advantage of the Laravel framework over the others is that it utilizes all the new features of the PHP. Most of the other frameworks are unable to do it. By using the Laravel 5, you are able to use many new features that are provided by PHP like Interfaces, overloading, Shorter array syntax, Namespaces, Anonymous functions.

2. Great documentation

It is believed that Laravel is develop-friendly due to documentation. All the version of the Laravel is discharged with the proper documentation in which you are able to find good and detailed explanations of classes, coding style, methods.  

3. Integration with mail services

It is very compulsory for web applications to stay in touch with the users and inform them about the new deals and offers. The framework is equipped with API rather than the SwiftMailer library. It also provides the drivers SMTP, Mailgun, SparkPost, Mandrill, PHP’s “mail” function, Amazon SES, and “send email” which helps you in sending the emails through the local services or cloud-based.

4. Supports popular cache backends

One of the more adventitious features is that it supports Memcached and Redis out-of-the-box.

5. Artisan

It is very difficult to do the repetitive programming tasks which are heavily time-consuming. Artisan is the command-line tool that helps in creating the skeleton code and runs the database system strongly.

6. Packages and resource availability

You can take advantage of npm packages and bower packages by connecting the framework with elixir and Gulp. It is very beneficially in resource and asset revisioning. Moreover, this combined with the composer will sort out dependencies and therefore it is the most stable source of the package in the PHP world.

7. A reduced product development cycle

As the integrations are faster it is possible to reduce the product development cycle. Also, you are provided with huge community support and have the assistance of Laracasts.

8. IoC Container

IoC is referred to as the inversion of Control. It is used for generating new objects without bootstrap any external libraries. Simply put, you are able to access these objects from where you are coding, you don't need to deal with inflexible monolithic structures.

9. Reverse Routing

It is also the most beautiful feature of Laravel. In this, you are able to create links to named routes. It is very easy for the users to create the links, just simply use the route's name, and the framework will automatically insert the correct URL. If the user changes the route, the change will occur everywhere.

10. Active Record Implementation

This is one of the most useful features in the framework in which it gives an easy and very helpful ActiveRecord implementation for running with your database. Put differently, it intends that the models you build in the MVC will have a corresponding table in the database.

Disadvantages of Laravel Framework

1. The Composer is not strong enough

As Laravel is a new framework, therefore it is difficult for developers to deal with it. Also, the composer of Laravel is not strong enough in comparison with Ruby gems, npm (node.js), pip (for python), etc.

2. Lack of continuation between versions

No transition from Laravel 4 to 5 has seemed. It could break the application if you try to update the code.

3. Quality is mixed at times

There are some components in the framework which are not well-designed.

For instance, sometimes dependency injection becomes needlessly complex. You have to learn a lot before you start to create applications.

Therefore, it is not suitable for amateur developers.

4. Some upgrades might be problematic

It is not only a Laravel problem but also PHP frameworks that show some troubles when the version is upgraded. So, the user has to take care of the precautions before updating the version.

5. Development

If we check the development of other frameworks, we found out that their development is quite faster in contrast with Laravel.

Comparison with other PHP Frameworks

Laravel vs Lumen

Laravel	Lumen
Laravel has a config: cache and route: cache	It does not possess these caches.
It possesses web routes with sessions and API stateless routes	It possesses only stateless routes.
It has a powerful template system	Lumen does not this type of feature
It has poor performance and unsatisfactory speed	Lumen has better performance and better speed than Laravel
Laravel has Symfony.	Lumen does not possess Symfony.

Laravel vs CodeIgniter

Laravel	CodeIgniter
It follows the object-oriented method	It follows the relational object-oriented
It is for those who need an elegant and modest kind of toolkit	It is for those who use a simple tool kit
It is object-oriented event-driven functional	It is component driven
It supports explicit routing	It supports explicit and implicit routing
It supports built-in the modular feature	It does not support built-in the modular feature
It supports HTTP routes	It does not support the HTTP route sufficiently.