Laravel For Developers: Where, Why, And How To Use Laravel

In the competitive world of web development, it is important to have a tool that can help you save time and effort, while still allowing you to create high-quality applications. In the development of web applications, PHP is one of the most trusted technologies. You can choose from several frameworks to suit your needs.

Laravel is a PHP framework that is designed to do just that.

Are you a web developer looking for a new PHP framework to use? Want to know why Laravel is a popular choice for many programmers? In this article, we’ll introduce Laravel and explain where, why, and how you can use it efficiently for building robust applications. We will also discuss some of the key features that make Laravel an attractive option for web developers.

Let’s begin, 

What is Laravel?

Laravel PHP framework is a popular web development framework. It simplifies coding, integrates with databases and APIs, and adds security features. As an open-source framework that is free to use and easy to learn, it comes with features that make it ideal for developing both small and large applications. 

It runs on PHP, is entirely server-side and focuses heavily on data manipulation while adhering to a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It is primarily used for creating custom PHP web apps and can handle many tasks that are time-consuming to build yourself, such as routing, HTML templating, and authentication. 

Key features of Laravel

It has a vast ecosystem with immediate deployment, routing, templating, ORM, DB query and listing. It embraces a general growth philosophy that gives high priority to code creation. Laravel is integrated with many tools that build faster apps. Some of its key features include:

• Eloquent ORM
• Query Builder
• Reverse Routing
• Restful Controllers
• Migrations
• Database Seeding
• Unit Testing
• Homestead

Getting started with Laravel is easy

When it comes to learning Laravel, its extensive library of documentation, guides, and video tutorials will make it a breeze. Laravel provides robust tools for senior developers, such as dependency injection, unit testing, queues, and real-time events.

Because it is built on PHP, a solid understanding of that language is required. Variables, arrays, loops, functions, and object-oriented programming are examples of such concepts. Check out our previous blog posts for more developer insights on learning Laravel.

Why use Laravel?

Laravel is designed for developing applications quickly and easily while providing an elegant and advanced syntax for creating robust web applications. But that is not all. Here are a few more reasons why you should consider Laravel for your next big PHP development project. 

• The framework is based on MVC architecture, meaning it separates the logic from the presentation, allowing for the applications to be built faster and easier to maintain in the long run.
• Laravel provides several tools that make development faster and easier, including a templating engine, object-oriented libraries, a command-line interface, and more.
• It is highly configurable and can be fully customized to meet your needs and can be extended to create more complex applications with packages, modules, and libraries.
• It’s feature-rich and easy-to-use syntax allows developers to easily create applications in a short timeframe.
• Laravel provides its command line interface (CLI) tool called Artisan, which helps developers build a database quickly, create models, and generate controllers.
• Laravel also provides database migration and seeding tools, which help developers to keep their database schema up-to-date.
• Laravel is designed to improve performance by reducing the response time of web applications. It also supports caching, which helps to improve the speed of your application.
• It is popular to be easily scalable, allowing you to quickly add new features and functionality to your application without having to rewrite code.
• Open-source technology is always an excellent choice, as you do not have to pay anything for it and can create incredible applications.
• Laravel has a dependable community where you can find answers to your problems, which makes you unstoppable even when facing a complex challenge.

Where to use Larvel?

If you’re looking to quickly build high-performance, secure, and scalable web applications, It is the most suitable choice. With its easy-to-learn syntax and built-in security features, Laravel is the perfect choice for any developer looking to develop modern web applications.

Laravel also gives a structure and a starting point for developing an application. This allows you to focus on creating something amazing while it handles the details. It promotes simplicity and clarity. It can be used to build everything from simple hobby projects to Fortune 500 companies.

Top Web Applications Built with Laravel

• Invoice Ninja – An all-in-one accounting software for small businesses
• Neighborhood Lender – An online marketplace that helps people find mortgage options in their neighbourhood
• BarChart- To generate easily accessible reports in bar charts

The Biggest Companies Using Laravel

How to use Laravel?

Using Laravel for developing a web application is relatively simple, even for beginner developers. The following guide will help you get started with using Laravel:

Installation

You will need to install and set up a development environment of your choice to work with Laravel. This includes installing PHP, MySQL, and a web server like Apache or Nginx.

Source- Laravel

Setup application structure               
Once you have your development environment ready, create an application structure and decide what features you need to add. For example, if you are creating a blog site, you might want to include a user registration page, an article page, and comments page, etc.

Define database structure
The database structure mostly depends on your application’s data needs. For example, if you are creating a blog site, you will need to store information about users, articles, and comments. Define all this in the database and set up the database structure.

Code

Once the database and application structure are defined, begin coding the application. You can use Laravel’s CLI tool Artisan to quickly set up the database, create models, and generate controllers. This will help you build the application quickly.

Test and deploy

Once you have developed the application, test it thoroughly and deploy it. You can deploy the application to either a production server or a staging server to perform further testing.

Conclusion

Laravel is a great framework for developing websites and web applications. It is built on the popular PHP language and comes with a lot of features and tools to simplify web development. It is popular among developers due to its intuitive and read design and understanding of object-oriented programming principles.

At the end of the day, the decision to use Laravel, or any other framework, boils down to your specific needs. If you are looking for a feature-rich and powerful framework, then Laravel is the right choice. However, if you are looking for a simpler, quick, and lightweight framework, then there are other frameworks available which may be more suited to your needs. Which include, CakePHP, Codeigniter 

You can also check our latest post on the top 10 frameworks to use in 2023. To better evaluate your needs and find solutions that fit you the best. 

Happy learning!