As per the Github Stars received for Top PHP frameworks, Laravel beats MVC-based PHP frameworks such as Symfony and Codeigniter by a considerable margin.

Why are developers taking a liking for Laravel over other MVC-based PHP Frameworks? What are its features that make it so appealing?

Here’s a quick note on the same:

Before we begin, let’s try and understand what Laravel is. For the uninitiated, Laravel is a web application development framework which enables developers to create web applications with more interactive, immersive, and enhanced user experience. While doing so, it has considered and tried to address the hinderances that take the fun away from web application development.

Why is Laravel being used extensively for web application development?

We may have to delve into the list of benefits to explain this further.

1. Faster Development and Deployment:

Laravel has been developed to work well on a modular basis. The users can take advantage of the pre-built functions in the Laravel repository. As these functions work on the newest and most updated PHP version, it enables developers to focus on creativity and seamlessly build a responsive application on the web. As Laravel is an open-source framework, the developers using this have been constantly striving to improve it and the results are visible if the popularity of Laravel is anything to go by.

2. Seamlessness in building processes such as 2 Factor Authentication and Access Rights

Laravel has enabled developers to implement the entire authentication process with logic using a single command. The framework enables the developers to ensure that the correct set of access rights per employee/ entity can be granted seamlessly. This enables the developers to save time and channel it into building and testing out the apps that they build. It enables them to take a better product to market, much faster than they would have done otherwise.

3. Helps developers to circumvent or mitigate security vulnerabilities at an early stage:

Whether one adopts an agile development methodology or the traditional waterfall model, the cost, time, and effort taken to address technical vulnerabilities at a later stage is significantly higher. It can completely derail the deadlines and result in cost over-runs and low-quality development of web applications.  Such a situation is not desirable.

With Laravel, the framework is completely secure and can keep security vulnerabilities such as injection flaws, broken authentication, cross site scripting etc. at bay. Thus, Laravel helps developers to create high quality web applications faster and cost-effectively.

4. Accelerates go-to-market with Automated and Unit Testing Support:

With Laravel, developers can leverage its in-built automation testing support to ensure that they test the web applications thoroughly and faster. This enables them to accelerate go-to-market and build new ones swiftly.

As Laravel development is modularized, its unit testing feature helps developers to check each module and how they integrate with the overall web application. This ensures that the web application performs well, and each module can seamlessly communicate and enhance the utility of the module. The code is optimized, and web applications can be scaled easily because of these features of Laravel.

5. Efficient Management of Traffic to the web application:

Despite building an efficient website in terms of design and user experience, if the growing traffic cannot be managed well, it dampens the entire user experience and value of the web application. As the traffic increases, so does the number of requests that the web applications must handle from multiple users. The concurrent hits and requests can take a toll on the website server and increase the cost of hosting and provisioning for concurrent hits. If the scenario impacts the loading of the web application itself, it can lead to bad user experience and loss of data and interaction value.

With Laravel, the framework supports message queue systems, and its queue service provides a unified API to diverse back-ends. The queue can prioritize requests and address critical tasks immediately to ensure that the web requests to the application are addressed seamlessly.

Laravel seems to be gaining in popularity among the developers who work on the MVC based PHP frameworks. As an organization trying to adopt it, you may want to start using it for small non-critical web applications to build capabilities and confidence before leveraging its benefits for critical business applications. The benefits of a successful adoption would be faster go-to-market with web applications. It will also enable developers to enjoy the development of application by spending more time and effort on creating the web applications and enhancing its value for its consumers (users of the web applications).