You might hear of the Laravel framework if you are a PHP developer. Laravel is one of the widely used PHP frameworks, which is used widely for many small and large applications. Laravel provides many inbuilt features which help in creating PHP applications quickly. This is mainly due to the ease of writing code; less code is needed for bootstrapping new applications.
Important features of Laravel framework
Here is an overview of the Laravel framework and its features. All these topics are explained here in simple words. Later We will discuss these topics in detail.
MVC architecture
When it comes to modern PHP frameworks, MVC structure is essential. It helps developers from separating the business logic from the presentation. In Laravel, it is not necessary to use the MVC structure for developing applications. But most developers prefer to use MVC in Laravel when they create a DB-oriented project. Laravel models are used for interacting with databases. Controllers are usually used for writing business logic of any changes needed for the data. A view is used for representing data.
Authentication
Laravel includes built-in authentication and a session system that can easily access using Facades. So one can quickly build an application authentication system using this with Auth or Session facade without writing many internal queries. Laravel also provides starter kits that help us from developing the authentication with a couple of commands.
ORM
Laravel Eloquent is the ORM or object-relational mapper used in Laravel applications. Eloquent ORM helps developers interact with the database much more quickly. So as discussed earlier, Laravel uses models. Usually, each database table will have a Model associated with it, which is used for interacting with the database. Once a model is created referencing a table, the developer can use that model's object to interact with it with a database, including inserts, updating, deleting, and retrieving data from the table.
Template system
Laravel uses a template system in the presentation section, and Laravel uses blade templates to present data. The blade template engine is a simple-to-use template engine where developers can write native PHP codes along with blade template-specific features. Even if we are writing the blade-specific codes, all the view pages will be converted to simple PHP files and saved in the cache when modified. So this will not add any extra load when rendering the view during the application's run time.
Laravel artisan console
Artisan is one of the cool features bundled with Laravel. It is a command line tool that helps in running application-level commands. In-built artisan commands help developers during the development process. It helps to create different Laravel components with ease. So this is useful in saving plenty of time by avoiding repetitive tasks. Using the console feature, developers can write custom commands that can be used to run tasks. Commands generated using this can use with the scheduler to run cron jobs as well.
Db migration and seeding
Laravel has an in-built option for database migration and seeding data. Laravel migration is one of the most remarkable tools for defining database schema. So it will act as a system for managing database changes step-by-step, somewhat similar to the version control system.
Seeding is somewhat similar to Database migrations. But this helps feed data to the database during any application stage. This allows teammates to set up applications quickly. It will be just a matter of writing proper documentation about the installation procedure, from running seeds to following the correct steps.
Packages
Laravel greatly supports adding new packages to the application based on business logic. There are so many packages directly endorsed by the Laravel team, making it easy for developers to add new features with fantastic ease.
Easiness of creating modular applications
Laravel can be used for creating a modular application. The Default Laravel application comes with a default App namespace. Instead, we can develop different namespaces for each module in the application. So we can create an Auth namespace for the authentication section and a Client namespace for client-related operations. In the above case, the developer needs to add mapping to psr-4 autoload section in composer.
Security
Laravel framework is a secure framework. The code is available as open source. In most cases, Laravel uses encryption regarding sessions and cookies. There is an inbuilt Hash facade for hashing passwords. Eloquent is capable of providing protection against MySQL injections and other similar kinds of attacks.
Laravel provides an easy-to-use authentication system. Middleware can be used effectively to provide access control to users.
Testing
We can quickly write test cases inside the Laravel application to unit test the application. Laravel uses PHPUnit to test the application, and the phpunit.xml file is already included with the application. So this will helps developers to start writing test cases in the Laravel application with great ease.
We are concluding this article about basic Laravel features.