Laravel and Other Frameworks

Developers have many choices while choosing a scripting language, some times deciding one becomes bit complicated.Developers choose a particular language as per the requirement of the project.We have many languages available like ASP, JSP, Perl, CGI, and PHP. May be there is always a debate between PHP and ASPX ,but its hard to argue against the popularity of PHP, because big IT Giants are already using PHP. Facebook, one of the top social networking website is using PHP. Another reason of popularity of the php is WordPress. WordPress uses PHP to power its internals, which in return is powering more than 26% of the web. Currently, PHP powers more than 82% of websites (whose server-side programming languages the Web Technology Surveys site is able to track).

Why pick a PHP framework?

What makes developers to use PHP Frameworks rather then using core php for application development?

Working in core php without framework takes lot of time and makes developers work hard but on using any PHP framework this problem is solved.Now developers are using frameworks which makes development faster .Now you don’t have to write complex queries to retrieve the data from the database. PHP frameworks provide CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, and Delete).

Few Benefits of using framework are summed up below:

Development is faster using Less Code (Rapid application development)

• Frameworks enable developers to scale systems easily.
• Code maintenance is easier than with a vanilla PHP application. The application code is concise and easy to work with.
• Frameworks are better in securing the web application from common security threats.
• The don’t repeat yourself (DRY) principle ensures that minimal code has maximum impact.
• Pre Build Libraries & Tools that can help you with Database Abstraction
• Model view control (MVC) Architecture
• Input/Output Filtering & From Validation
• Session & Cookie handling with session management security integration.
• Any value passed to database object gets filtered against SQL injection attacks central authentication service architecture
• All HTML generating functions, such as form helpers and URL helpers filter the output automatically
• Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection and Client-Side Cross-site scripting protection (xss)
• Encrypting cookies automatically is only a matter of changing a config option Suitable for teamwork
• Community support and lot more

Sometimes too many options create difficult situation and deciding one become bit difficult.Choosing one among many ,needs lot of analysis and knowledge of all.

How to choose a PHP framework

Before choosing any of the available framework one has to analyse them of some parameters .Any framework, meeting the required parameters can be selected.Few of the parameters are defined below.

• Features and functionality of the framework? (Does it offer what I need?)
• Learning curve of the framework.
• Scalablity of the framework.
• Updates and Maintenance by the core team.
• Long Term Support (LTS Support) .
• Framework Community Support?

As we already discussed that it is not easy job to decide any particular framework for application development and it takes a lot to decide which one is best among many options. Lets now try to Analyse top most 5 frameworks so that we can conclude on one.

Some of the key point feature of laravel :

1. Restful routing.
2. Inherent Database Version control
3. A lightweight Blade Templating Engine -A lightweight Blade Templating Engine that is powerfully driven by template inheritance of files having blade.php extension. This comes under the View part of the robust MVC architecture of Laravel.
4. Composer — An amazing tool that lets you manage your application’s third-party packages easily.
5. Comes bundled with Eloquent –An ORM that offers a beautifully simple Active Record implementation to work with your databases and is relatively faster than all other PHP frameworks.
6. Built-in uni-testing and simply readable impressive syntax.
7. Larger Community catering to thousands of programming geeks and application developers
8. Intelligently designed to offer incredible flexibility to developers that help them create each and everything from small sites to giant enterprise applications.
9. Application Logic that can be incorporated within any of your web applications using two ways — Either the Laravel Controllers or Route declarations utilizing a syntax similar to Sinatra framework.
10. Automatic Pagination- We can use pagination to handle multiple pages with the help of configuration option in the “app/config/view.php” file. Generally for developers pagination is a heavy and hectic task especially the bunch of unnecessary configurations clutters up everything in the code. But with the help of Laravel, they can do this task in a jiffy by getting db record count and using a limit or an offset via ‘paginate’ option in two views — Slider View and Simple view. The best part with Laravel is, both of these views are fully compatible with Twitter Bootstrap framework also.

Get more information from laravel official community website Laravel.com

Let’s discuss Codeigniter framework

Another popular PHP framework is CodeIgniter ,which is developed using most famous architectural the model-view-controller design pattern and its considered by lot of companies as most user-friendly framework for small to large scale project. Codeigniter is among the most popular frameworks because of many reasons and developers love to work with codeigniter.

CodeIgniter Features making it developers Preferred Choice :

• Develop using MVC pattern
• No PHP Version Conflicts
• Less Chances to Mess The Code
• Less Duplication of Code
• Most Active Online Community
• Built-in Libraries and Helpers
• Cache Class
• Security and Encryption
• Database abstraction .
• Easy to understand and extend
• Little to no server requirements.
• All the tools you need in one little package.

Get CodeIgniter Rocks Web Framework information from ww.codeigniter.com

The Fast, secure and professional PHP Framework — YII

Depending on developer’s requirements & Expertise, any framework be its YII or cakephp, can be the best framework..when you are going to rank best framework, you have to review all the aspect of every framework, Yii framework is the best for developing a website.

YII, one of the most important distinction which separates yii from all other PHP web framework is the AJAX integrated widgets.Unlike CakePHP yii have owned automated code generation tools. Yii have powerful back end setting tools that’s allow you select the feature you want to load on the front-end.

YII selected features list:

• Fast — YII is very much known for its speed
• Utilizes Modern Technologies — CRUD Feature
• Highly Extensible
• Database tables as objects (so that we don’t need to query all time)
• Easy Form Validation
• Great support for Jquery and ajax.
• Inbuilt Authentication and Authorization
• Shorten Development Time
• Easy to Tune for Better Performance

Like any other good framework yii help you to develop quick modern web application with great performance and securities.

Have you tried with other php framework then just YII –yiiframework.com

ZEND FRAMEWORK

Zend is another best open source framework to create web applications and services. Zend is the fully object oriented language because of that it allows developers create special variations and individual component. Zend frameworks have the best features like extensive validation which you can use to validate data coming from forms. You can also use MVC components to create ZF projects.The components of Zend framework is unique. Developers can use these components as they want and it offers a robust, high-performance MVC implementation MVC implementation.

Features of Zend framework :

• Extensive collection of unit tests
• Ability to make code reusable.
• List of advanced PHP Extensions and Components
• You can select single components instead of the complete Zend Framework
• Simply a collection of classes
• You simply instantiate a Zend_Validate class and call the method
• You can use client libraries to simply access to web services

Why You Should Use Cakephp ?

Developers who are looking for a free open-source and rapid development framework for PHP can choose CakePHP. Cakephp community’s primary goal is to enable you to work in a structured and rapid manner without loss of time and flexibility.If you want to start with CakePHP then you don’t have to waste more time, because a team of CakePHP provides you all the tools you need to get started.So CakePhp Community is strong and developers can take advantage of that.

Here’s a quick list of features you’all enjoy when using CakePHP :

• Clean MVC Conventions
• Active, friendly community
• Compatible with versions 4 and 5 of PHP
• Batteries Included — The things you need are built-in
• Application scaffolding
• Code generation tools
• Fast and flexible templating (PHP syntax, with helpers)
• Request dispatcher with clean, custom URLs and routes
• Integrated CRUD for database interaction
• Email, Cookie, Security, Session, and Request Handling Components
• Data Sensitization Techniques used flexible working arrangements applied.
• Works from any web site directory, with little to no Apache configuration involved.

I will say that there are lots of interesting things going on in other framework but most of just reuse. If you want to develop small — medium scale web application then CakePHP is useful framework.

Get more details about CakePHP –http://cakephp.org/

Symfony is among the top most 3 PHP Frameworks. It is one of the most actively used framework that ships with a powerful ORM and excellent documentation. The frequency of its fast adoption can be cited from the fact that Drupal, the most popular Open source CMS framework worldwide uses the symfony components upto its latest version (Drupal 8).

Exclusive Features

1. The most stable, sustainable and flexible 3 in 1 framework that is quickly adaptable to all your needs
2. Entirely Configurable with its “Dependency Injector” and “Event Dispatcher”
3. Can be used as a standalone micro framework (Symfony 2) without you having to reinvent the wheel and installing the entire framework
4. Lets you build and customize everything as per your own needs
5. Growing Ecosystem of expert Community, Mailing Lists and IRCs etc. and many other service companies
6. Extensible upto the brim and is presented as “Bundles” that are intended to add extra functionalities to the framework.
7. Lets you leverage the power and strength of development by allowing to validate roles and improve productivity
8. Apparently accessible to satiate professionals and advanced users with its amazing documentation and best practices.

After reviewing Google trend comparisons, there are no doubts to say that laravel become most popular PHP framework of 2016.

Only reviewing google trend graph we can define that laraval is one of the best PHP framework. Yes ,Every framework has an own key point which one best on specific industries. So it is also important to review other popular php frameworks.

After reading this article, you are aware of which is the best frameworks and answer is Laravel Framework. Now, PHP developers choose any of the frameworks for PHP development as they comfortable and requirement. And For business purpose if you want to grow your business and create website with these frameworks, you should always exploring every single option available and keep your eyes on the latest technologies.