What is Laravel? Over time, many developers come to the conclusion that projects need to be implemented more and more difficult, and all ordinary CMS either simply do not reach the desired result in terms of their capabilities, or they seem to be able to provide all the functionality we need, but the project turns out to be very cumbersome, with a bunch of excess code, it takes extra, so precious seconds to load the pages…
In this case, if there is enough knowledge in the relevant areas, frameworks come to our rescue, which allows us to implement projects sharpened exclusively for our needs.
One of such PHP frameworks is Laravel. However, “one of,” said it very modestly. Many experts consider this development platform one of the most promising today, which is confirmed by the active growth of web developers switching to using Laravel from the same Yii, which, although it has not lost its position as the most popular PHP framework in the US, is definitely gradually moving into in this direction giving way to more practical competitors.
Table of Contents
Laravel benefits.
Using Composer
This dependency manager allows you to load the libraries necessary for the work of each specific project in a simple and convenient way.
Its distinguishing feature is that it installs them locally for each project, which is very convenient. In general, his work looks like this:
- We have a project that uses a number of libraries with their dependencies for its work.
- The code describes the libraries required for its operation.
- Composer will itself find the corresponding versions of the libraries and install them on our project.
Besides convenience and functionality, the Composer’s big advantage is versioning support for the application. Thanks to this, we can not worry that when deploying our project on a new platform, it will have problems with the code.
Using PHP 5.4.
Since version 5, Laravel uses the PHP 5.4 standard in its work. This is good news since we have at our disposal the full functionality of this standard: traits, function closures, etc.
Please note that it is not just adapted for the fifth version of PHP, it is developed for it, with the ability to use all the latest features.
The regular release of new versions.
Web developers using Laravel for a relatively long time have long noticed that new versions of this framework are released approximately every half a year.
This is a significant plus when choosing a framework for work because you can be sure that all errors and shortcomings found by users are fixed as quickly as possible.
Using dotenv.
This PHP library greatly simplifies the life of developers in terms of managing environments when creating and deploying projects.
It allows you to quickly set the configuration for each environment, thereby simplifying the procedure for deploying a project.
As an example of use, you can consider storing confidential information (logins, passwords for accessing the site and databases, etc.) in a .env file.
An example of the content of such a file:
APP_ENV = production
DB_HOST = 127 . 0 . 0 . 1
DB_DATABASE = myfirstdb
DB_USERNAME = superadm
DB_PASSWORD = s7l3h5ivhohjgo3
In general, as you probably already understood, this library is used to store secret data in the key-value format.
PSR-4 support
The distinguishing features of Laravel include support for this autoloading standard.
This is very convenient because it allows you to structure your project files the way you want, and not as required by the requirements of the framework. Yes, yes, I did not seize myself – PSR-4 does not require these files to be contained in these folders, we ourselves structure the project for ourselves.
Then using a simple command:
PHP artisan app: name MyNameSpace
We can create our own application namespace.
Reverse Control IoC Container
A tool that takes the flexibility of working with PHP classes to a new level.
It allows you to manage the dependencies of the classes (remove the coded ones and connect the new ones as the code runs).
It can be used to extract classes without prior configuration:
class FooBar {
public function __construct ( Baz $ baz )
{
$ this -> baz = $ baz ;
}
}
But these are only flowers.
If desired, we can not just manage the dependencies of individual classes, but add dependencies based on methods:
class OrderController extends BaseController {
public function getIndex ( Order $ orders )
{
$ all = $ orders -> all ( ) ;
return View :: make ( ‘orders’ , compact ( ‘all’ ) ) ;
}
}
With all this, we have no restrictions on the number of added dependencies.
Form requests
This functionality of the framework is designed to validate requests for controllers.
It allows not only to check the correctness of the entered data but to fully process the request to the controller.
Eloquent ORM
This is the Laravel template for working with databases.
Allows, in addition to the standard set of commands for working with the database, to use a number of interesting operations (model observers, query areas, etc.).
Flysystem
Simple and elegant tool. It is used to work with file systems that are based on cloud services like dropbox.
It is worth noting that this functionality comes out of the box with Laravel.
Elixir
Another handy tool used to improve the performance of our applications.
Allows you to quickly and easily optimize our project by compressing and combining CSS and JS files.
HHVM support
Another point that just makes us pay attention to Laravel because it is one of the first frameworks to fully support this environment.
For those who do not know, HHVM is the latest PHP environment from Facebook, which is distinguished by its speed.
So to increase the speed of our project, we can simply switch the application to this mode of operation.
Homestead useable
A development environment that is called out of the box. Includes all the necessary (and already configured as needed) components for working on a project.
This saves time spent on setting up the environment for a project on a local machine.
Rocketeer
A tool for quickly deploying projects.
It can be used for any project, developed on any platform, written in any programming language.
Allows you not only to deploy all the necessary project environments but also to quickly roll back in case of problems.
Laravel Community
Is it worth mentioning that today a fairly large and friendly community has gathered around this framework, which is able to help newcomers to master it and solve problems that they themselves are not able to figure out?
In support of my words, I will just say that by the end of 2014, Laravel became the most popular PHP framework on GitHub.
Summing up.
You can argue for a long time which framework is better to put in the foundation of your future project, after all, Laravel’s competitors sometimes really have something to attract new users.
But it is worth giving credit to the fact that today it is perhaps the most dynamically developing project in its niche, and it is not so easy to earn the recognition of the Internet community.
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