There are so many choices out there to choose from the list of PHP frameworks, and it can be a daunting task for beginners or those who have never worked with PHP frameworks to figure out which framework meets the purpose of development. Along with the choice you make, comes the thought of which framework is easiest to learn.
The last question is hard answer though because programming is never easy but as per experience and verdict from other developers Laravel 5.1 is easier to pick up than other frameworks to work with.
Benefits of developing application in Laravel Framework
#1. In-built lightweight templates
Laravel framework has an in-built template library with which developers can create amazing layouts with dynamic content seeding. It has many widgets that include js and CSS code with solid structures. These templates help out in building a simple layouts with different sections.
#2. Artisan
Usually a developer has to interact with the Laravel Framework using a command line that creates and handles the project environment. For this purpose Laravel provides a built-in tool called Artisan. This tool allows us to perform most of those majority of the repetitive and tedious programming tasks easily and conveniently that most of the developers avoid to perform manually.
Artisan can be utilized to make a skeleton code, the database structure and build their migration which helps in managing the database system easily. It can also be used for generating the basic MVC files right away using the command lines and manage those assets and their respective configurations. There are other two benefits that can be achieved with the use of Artisan: one, it can let us create our own commands and do convenient things. Second, it lets us perform unit tests for our application through this.
#3. Eloquent ORM
Laravel provides the Eloquent ORM which includes PHP ActiveRecord implementation, that helps the developer in writing the database related queries using the PHP syntax instead of writing the SQL code. Every table in the database contains a model through which the developers can interact with it. An ORM tool is faster and easy than all other PHP frameworks.
#4. Libraries
It has Object Oriented Libraries and many other libraries which are usually not found as functionality in other popular PHP frameworks. One of the talked about library is the Authentication library. It is very easy to implement, even though it has many advanced features like Bcrypt hashing, checking active users, password reset functions, CSRF(Cross Site Request Forgery) and encryption.
#5. Modular
Laravel Framework has been developed by using 20 different libraries and is divided into modules. It adopts, modern PHP principles, which allows the developers to build modular, responsive and handy apps.
#6. MVC Architecture Support
Laravel uses the MVC like patterns, ensuring clarity between logic and presentation. This architecture helps in improving the performance of the websites, allows good documentation features, and has many built-in functions.
#7. Helpful Migration System
In Laravel, Migration systems allow to expand the database structures of the application without the need to re-create it every time we make the change in the application. Using this system, there are no chances to lose the development data. As said before, Laravel migration not only provides the facility to change the structure of the database but it also lets us do so using the PHP codes instead of SQL. Laravel Schema builder lets us build database tables and insert columns or indices quickly and efficiently.
#8. Unit-Testing facility
Laravel is loved by a lot of programmers because of its ability to provide unit-testing. It allows programmers to run numerous tests to ensure that the changes done by them in the application perform in the right manner. Laravel is known in the industry to deliver some of the fail-proof releases as it is careful of the known failures. It also makes it easy to write own code for unit-tests.
#9. Security
While developing an application, usually programmers use some or the other third party resources to make the application secure. But Laravel has an in-built security providing feature within its framework. It uses the salted and hashed password method, which means that the password for an application would never save as plain text in database.