Every web development project begins with a few questions. For PHP developers, one of those questions would be about the framework to use for the project. Any PHP developer will have heard of Laravel. After its release, Laravel quickly ascended to be one of the biggest benefits of PHP development.

It’s a free PHP framework that follows an MVC architectural pattern. Ease of use, modular packaging and trouble-free syntaxes made Laravel a revolutionary framework in PHP web development. 

Let’s see what it brought to the table and where Laravel could end up in the future.

Features

It’s no surprise how Laravel ended up winning quite a few framework popularity polls last year. It’s packed with features that make PHP development fun and fast. It won’t be easy to cover all its features but here are a few that made it to the top of the list.

• View Composers – They are callbacks (or call methods) that help organize code into one location. Mostly called when a view is rendered.
  
• Database Migrations and Seeding – An automated process where you can seed database tables with default data. This can be further utilized for application testing or when setting up the application for the first time.
  
• Routing System – Routing is way easier with Laravel. You will find it easier to trigger the route without compromising flexibility or control. Directories are created to match URLs.
  
• Easier Authentication and Caching – Tasks like authentication, queuing and caching are easier with Laravel. You get a lot of options to tweak the behavior of the authentication services.
  

A Big Deal for PHP Web Development 

• It emerged out of the blue – Laravel emerged very quickly and took the PHP development community by storm. It’s one of the most popular PHP frameworks according to Google Trends. With a plethora of features and a capability to handle large-scale web development projects with ease, it quickly became a favorite for PHP development companies.
  
• Its MVC architecture – Its MVC architectural pattern makes logic and presentation transparent for the developers, while improving performance and allowing better documentation. 
  
• Modularity – Built on over 20 different libraries, Laravel further divides them into separate modules. It makes use of modern PHP principles, which makes it easier for developers to build user-friendly and responsive web applications.
  
• Template engine – The lightweight templates in Laravel, designed for straightforward webpage layouts with multiple sections, can be used to create unique layouts with dynamic content seeding. It also features a number of CSS and JS powered widgets.
  
• Libraries, configuration and adaptability – Laravel is an adaptable to multiple development environments, and can adjust itself to be compatible with the platform where the application runs as it incorporates object oriented authorization libraries with auto-complete features. Many other leading frameworks lack this feature.
  
• It’s open source – The icing on the cake. Laravel is an open source framework. It’s free and frees the developers from the hassles of developing complicated web applications. Code maintainability is a bonus.
  

Conclusion

Having proved its worth as a dominant PHP framework, Laravel’s future looks bright. It’s simple and packed with numerous beneficial features. Why would there be a bigger reason why it’s a favorite choice for PHP developers?