Laravel is an open-source PHP framework available free of cost designed for the development of Web Application which follows MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. It comes with features such as a modular packaging system, a variety of ways to access the relational database, utilities that help in web application deployment.
Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks used across the globe to build web applications ranging from small to big projects. Laravel is the choice of professional developers because of its performance, features, and scalability.

Why should I use Laravel?

Laravel has been considered as one of the most effective platforms that take the pain out in rendering apps development services with the most advanced functions.

• It follows the model-view-controller design pattern.
• It has great ORM and database layers.
• Routing is simple and very easy to do.
• The functional core can be extended.
• It can easily be integrated with third-party libraries.
• Unit testing is sustained out of the box.

Who uses Laravel?

A large number of websites – almost 1,35,000 – have been built on Laravel rather than other PHP frameworks.
Some of the well-known companies using Laravel Development are-

• MasterCard
• 9GAG
• Pfizer
• BBC
• RazorPay
• Kmong
• Bitpanda
• Crowdcube
• WISESIGHT
• Primary Stack and others

Laravel's Market Share

Top 10 Laravel Features You Need To Know

1. MVC Architecture For Exceptional Support & Performance

Laravel supports Model-View-Controller(MVC) architecture pattern which ensures separate business logic and presentation layers. MVC pattern of Laravel has a lot of built-in functions, improves application performance, and increases security as well as scalability.

2. Template Engine For Outstanding Layouts

Laravel is one of the top frameworks in PHP that offers in-built templates that are lightly weighted by nature. Through this, you can create an outstanding layout with the most revolutionizing content seeding.
The blade is a simple yet powerful template engine for Laravel that does not restrict using the plain PHP code in your views.

• Includes multiple widgets with JS code and CSS.
• Helps in infusing engaging content from the beginning.
• A wide range of business templates are available.

3. Artisan CLI For Utterly Simple & Fast Commands

Laravel architecture has its own Artisan command-line interface (CLI) for delivering a seamless data migration process during the development stages.
Laravel's Artisan tool eliminates those tedious and repetitive coding tasks that developers previously had to perform manually. In addition, it can be used to generate MVC files and manage data configurations by creating its own commands.
It is one of the few Artisan types that's made up of all documented items that are required for app authentication services. Artisan CLI is driven by the powerful Symfony Console component.

4. Eloquent ORM For Easy Interaction With App Database

Eloquent Object Relational Mapping(ORM) is Laravel’s built-in ORM. Laravel has the best object-relational mapper as compared to other frameworks. This object-relational mapping allows you to interact with the database of the application using expressive syntax.
Eloquent ORM, which allows application developers to write database queries with PHP syntax rather than SQL code. It works relatively speedier and faster than any other PHP framework.

5. Laravel Routing

Routing plays an important role in creating the paths of your site that require authentication. This is used in attaching the Application URLs to the specific controller view or action.
Firstly, it defines the route files and brings the URL and Closure function under consideration.

6. Automatic Pagination

One of the most popular features of Laravel is Automatic Pagination.
It minimizes the trouble of writing the code because PHP Framework Laravel comes with in-built pagination.

7. Database migration support

Laravel migration system helps in expanding the web application database without re-creating it whenever there is a change in code. Because of this, it is very minimal to the risk of losing data.
It gives you complete flexibility to modify the data structure and simultaneously execute this by using PHP instead of SQL. Thus, with the Laravel Schema Builder, you can insert the columns and tables without any hassle.

8. Libraries and Modular

Laravel comes with pre-installed Object-Oriented and Modular libraries that are not available in other PHP frameworks. They are easy to process and convenient to implement.
However, some of the latest features are

• Checking the user status.
• CSRF (Cross-site Request Forgery) protection.
• Password resetting and encryption.
• Bcrypt hashing.

9. Adequate App Testing Features

Laravel comes with a specific set of features for performing unit tests on your web applications/mobile applications through PHPUnit. It automatically set-up the file phpunit.xml for performing unit testing in web development.
What makes Laravel- The Most Stable Release in the web development industry.

• With unit testing, you can easily find the bugs.
• It saves your money and time and improves code coverage.
• Helps in gauging the performance.

It runs tests on two directories including Feature and Unit. The first, Unit tests, are for small coding portions. Feature tests are for larger codebases with several objects.
Laravel can run multiple unit tests at the same time to make sure all your new changes are tested properly. So, when it comes to testing your application, unit tests are better because they make it easy for developers to perform app testing.

10. Highly Secure

Laravel framework offers very strong web application security. It minimizes the probability of risk by offering CSRF tokens.
These tokens test each demand on the POST and guard against people who might modify the POST to GET the demand.
Also, It uses hashed and salted password mechanisms so the password would never be saved as plain text in the database. It also uses the “Bcrypt Hashing Algorithm” for generating an encrypted password.

Wrapping up the Laravel features

You can try out more new features of Laravel 8.16 such as Truehosts Middleware, foundation function, rebinding method, and the use of default URLs in Routing. Truehosts Middleware, for example, lets you create a bulk of logic. Also, you can fix coding errors using the rebinding method and default URLs in routing. It will improve your web application's performance, functionality, scalability, and security. So now I hope you are planning to create a Laravel web-based application in 2021!
Want to hire a skilled Laravel developer? Our team at Hamiters has some of the best services to offer you for web development.
I hope that you found this blog useful and were able to build an awesome web application today. If you really liked this post, please do share it on all social media platforms.

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