LARAVEL & WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Technology is improving day by day. Newer technologies are being developed and existing software is being updated on a daily basis. There are many ways by which a task can be done. For e.g., mobile applications can be developed using flutter as well as android studio amongst others. Websites can be done using JavaScript as well as PHP. Developers use different software and frameworks depending on their intended use and ease of use.

Laravel is a popular choice in web application development. It is a PHP framework is a popular general-purpose scripting language like ASP and Ruby. PHP framework is a platform that allows us to create applications. It saves a lot of time and space since it has built-in code that can be used repeatedly. It is a server-side PHP framework meaning one can use it to create apps requiring backend like storing user records etc.

It was created by Taylor Otwell in 2011 as a better alternative to CodeIgniter, another PHP framework. It is an open-source framework and follows the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It is a software design pattern that divides the program logic into 3 interconnected elements. This is done to differentiate between the way in which data is stored from the ways in which information is presented to and accepted from the user.

The recent years have shown an increase in the use of Laravel. Lets some of its advantages :-

1. MVC Support: Since Laravel works on MVC architecture, it keeps things separated into logical areas making the code more organised, easier to debug and less fragile. It also provides better documentation and speed up the performance. The built-in functionalities help a lot too.

2. Security: Security is a major problem that every developer face. While developing an application, he has to make sure it is secure. Luckily Laravel provides away. It stores passwords as a hash instead of plain text and uses the BCrypt hashing algorithm for encrypting. Also provides HTTP basic authentication, password reminders and resetting.

3. Artisan: It is the built-in tool for command line in Laravel. It helps a lot in performing the repetitive and exhausting programming tasks easily. Developers can extend the capabilities and functionalities of Artisan by implementing custom commands.

4. Object-Oriented Libraries: One of the best features of Laravel is its object-oriented and other pre-installed libraries. They are easy to implement and provides many features like BCrypt hashing, checking active users etc.

Apart from this, there are many other advantages of using Laravel like easy installation, presence of blade template, modularity, migration system, localization etc. like every other software or technology out there, Laravel has its cons too like lack of support of payments feature, lack of continuity between versions etc. But Laravel is still a relatively new software and is being upgraded and updated day by day. Despite these shortcomings, many developers today use Laravel. Many experts suggest beginners start with Laravel as well. There are many organizations out there ready to extend support Laravel enthusiasts. Countless tutorials and documentation are available for beginners to get started. Laravel has a beautiful and elegant syntax and helps create an application in a simple, expressive way. Hence, it is the most used PHP framework.