Laravel
What is Laravel and How Does It Work?
Laravel is a PHP framework that provides a set of tools and resources for building modern free and open-source PHP framework. With its useful built-in features and various extensions, Laravel has rapidly increased in popularity over the last few years.
Modern, user-friendly and powerful in structure, Laravel is a widely used tool for quickly scaling web projects. Laravel hosts many features that provide ease to developers and a comprehensive ecosystem.
Flexible structure, which Laravel has, MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture is used. This ensures that codes are more organized, easier to maintain, and cleanable. Laravel has a large community and continuously updated documentation, libraries, and packages to support developers.
One of the most important features of Laravel is its defined code structure and pre-built scaffolds. This allows repetitive tasks to be conducted quickly. Additionally, Laravel offers powerful database tools including an Eloquent ORM (Object Relational Mapper) and built-in mechanisms for creating database migrations increase database management capabilities.
Advantages of Laravel
The question “Why should I use Laravel?” is also among the frequently asked questions by developers. Laravel provides a wide set of tools that help make the web application development process easier and faster. Several key features that make Laravel a popular PHP framework include:
1- Easy to Learn
Laravel is relatively easy to learn. To effectively use Laravel, you need to have a general understanding of PHP and object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts.
2- Simple Syntax
Laravel has a syntax that is easy to read and understand. This speeds up the coding and development process. Additionally, with its powerful features and capabilities, it allows for the creation of advanced applications.
3- Fast Development Process
Laravel is designed to simplify tasks found in various web development projects such as routing, authentication, migrations, and caching. It facilitates the integration of pre-built modules into an application through intuitive command-line interfaces and Composer. Caching mechanisms are also supported. This increases performance by caching frequently used data and queries, reducing database load.
4- Comprehensive Documentation
One of the advantages of Laravel is that it has comprehensive documentation. It offers a wide range of online learning resources for developers. This makes it a developer-friendly PHP framework. Since it is one of the most widely used PHP frameworks, the library of existing Laravel applications and packages is also quite extensive.
5- Secure
Laravel is a secure PHP framework. It uses the Bcrypt algorithm to ensure the security of the website. Additionally, it offers features such as strong authentication and access control features to ensure that data is always secure.
6- Comprehensive Tool Set
Laravel offers a useful set of tools for developers of all levels. For example, it provides starter kits for basic authentication features for those who are new to programming.
7- Easy Scalability
Laravel is easily scalable. For example, with Laravel, you can deploy and scale your applications on AWS (Amazon Web Services) or other cloud providers. Additionally, by using a tool called Laravel Horizon, you can manage queue systems and ensure that your application can handle higher demands.
8- Large Community
Laravel has a large developer community. You can get support from this community to solve your problems and find solutions that fit your needs. To ask your questions, you can visit many Laravel forums such as Laravel.io, The Laravel subreddit, and Laracasts and many other Laravel forums.
9- Wide Usage
The Laravel PHP framework is fast, free, and flexible. It also speeds up the web and mobile application development processes. Because of all these features, many companies use Laravel to help build their websites. Learning Laravel now can benefit you throughout your career.
Some websites developed using Laravel include:
- Pfizer: Pfizer is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer connects with its customers through a Laravel-coded website and mobile application.
- BBC: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the oldest national broadcaster in the United Kingdom. They also have web applications related to TV and content production, for which they use AngularJS, Angular 6, and Laravel.
- 9GAG: 9GAG is a community-based website. It allows users to share their content on the site. To protect the 9GAG website, they use Laravel and Vue.js.
Features of Laravel
MVC Architecture - Laravel uses the MVC architectural model . This model includes a set of rules that determine how scalable and maintainable web applications are built.
The MVC architecture ensures that the code is more organized, sustainable and testable. It also facilitates the development of both small and large-scale web applications.
CLI - Laravel provides a set of commands through a command-line interface (CLI). These commands allow the application to perform specific tasks. The Artisan CLI feature allows for data migration, database management, and the creation of controllers and models. These features make web development easier.
Built-in Authentication - Laravel allows you to set up reliable and robust authentication features for web applications with just a few Artisan commands. This system simplifies authentication processes such as user registration, login, and password reset.
Blade Template Engine - The Blade Template Engine is a powerful tool that comes with Laravel. Blade allows binding data models, processing application code within template tags, and directing outputs to a text file. These features make Blade development faster and easier.
ORM - The Eloquent Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) is the database management tool that comes with the Laravel framework. This tool facilitates database operations.
Redis - Redis is an open-source database system that comes with Laravel. It is a fast and scalable in-memory database. Laravel supports using Redis as a cache for temporary data storage. Caching data in Redis speeds up database queries and feedback, making web applications faster.
What Can Be Done with Laravel?
Laravel has tools that help make web application development easier and faster. Using Laravel, the following web applications can be created:
✅ Social networking platforms,
✅ E-commerce sites,
✅ Multi-page and single-page applications (MPAs and SPAs),
✅ Static and dynamic websites,
✅ Enterprise applications,
✅ Content management systems,
✅ Blog sites,
✅ Business management and project tracking systems,
✅ Educational platforms
Should You Learn Laravel?
Laravel is one of the good frameworks for PHP coding. If you plan to work at large companies and want to develop your portfolio, you should learn Laravel.
According to BuiltWith, there are over 700,000 Laravel websites. As this number increases, the demand for Laravel developers will rise. Starting to learn Laravel will greatly benefit your career.
Before you start learning Laravel, you need to have an understanding of CRUD and MVC concepts and be able to code in HTML and PHP. Once this foundation is established, using Laravel to code an application or website will save you a lot of time.
Laravel Lessons / Laravel Training
There are many Laravel lessons and training resources available. Here are some resources you can refer to for learning Laravel:
1- Laravel Documentation
Official Laravel documentation is an explanation of the Laravel framework provided by the Laravel community and also available on GitHub. These documents provide an overview of all Laravel concepts. You can also find the documentation for official Laravel packages here.
2- Online Laravel Training Videos
There are many Laravel training videos available on the internet. On platforms like YouTube, you can find videos covering many topics from Laravel basics to advanced levels.
3- Online Training Platforms
On online training platforms like Udemy and Coursera, you can find courses related to Laravel. Courses are usually supported with resources like videos, practical assignments, and discussion forums.
4- Laravel Bootcamps
Bootcamps are an effective way to develop Laravel skills in a short time. These bootcamps will help you progress quickly whether you are new to PHP programming or not.
5- Laravel News
Laravel News is a Laravel training website. It is suitable for beginner developers. The site has a blog containing Laravel news, Laravel training covering topics from beginner to expert levels, a Laravel podcast, and a Laravel newsletter.
6- Laravel E-Books
For those who prefer to learn by reading, there are many Laravel e-books available. If you want to read e-books about Laravel, you can check out Laravel Up & Running: A Framework for Building Modern PHP Apps (Matt Stauffer) and Laravel: Learn By Coding’s (Scott Hughes) to read.
How to Learn Laravel: Step by Step
Now that we have explored what Laravel is used for, let's discuss how to learn Laravel step by step. Before you start learning Laravel, you need to be familiar with a few basic programming languages.
Step 1: Get Familiar with HTML, Core PHP, and Advanced PHP
Laravel is a PHP framework and all coding is done using PHP language. Therefore, before you start learning Laravel, you need to know how to write code in PHP. Since PHP is commonly used with HTML, learning the basic concepts of HTML will also be beneficial for you.
Step 2: Understand MVC Architecture
Understanding MVC is quite important to become proficient in Laravel because you need to structure your code according to MVC architecture when building a website in Laravel. Learning the MVC architecture will be beneficial not only for Laravel but also for general programming knowledge.
Step 3: Learn the Basics of Laravel
After completing the other steps, you can move on to learning the basics of Laravel. You can watch online videos, read official documentation, join bootcamps, or take a course for beginners. If you are an experienced programmer, learning the basics of Laravel will be relatively easier. If you are new to programming, learning Laravel will take longer.
Step 4: Create a Laravel Project
After understanding the basics of Laravel, it's time to move on to practice. For this, you can create a Laravel project and apply what you have learned. You can create projects such as a library management system, school/work attendance system, job board, social networking platform, etc. If you are new to Laravel development, you can put your created project on GitHub. This example will help you in job interviews.
In Summary
Laravel is a useful PHP framework for both beginners and experienced developers. It facilitates developers in creating well-optimized, secure, and high-performance websites.
Professionals proficient in the PHP programming language can open doors to a good career. If you want to continue in a PHP career, all you need to do is create your profile on Coderspace and wait for us to find the perfect opportunities for you! Click here to create your profile within 2 minutes and lean back, we'll handle the rest. :)
FAQ
Is Laravel Frontend or Backend?
Laravel offers some frontend functionalities, but it is a backend framework.
Is Laravel a Programming Language?
Laravel is a PHP framework.
How Does Laravel Work?
Laravel is an open-source framework running on PHP. Laravel is based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. Laravel processes the web application and presents the results to the clients.
