Advantages And Disadvantages Of Laravel Development

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a robust web application framework that comes with an elegant and expressive syntax to make your web development easier. It uses the PHP framework to develop custom applications. It has an extensive range of built-in features, such as a modular packaging system, automatic testing functions, etc.

It can be used in multiple projects, including caching and routing.

Advantages of Laravel Development

Choosing Laravel development for your project comes with multiple benefits, some of which are mentioned below:

1. Powerful Orm (Eloquent) For Database Interaction

For making any web application successful, effective database management is essential. The eloquent ORM of Laravel plays an important role by delivering a fluent and expressive interface for simplifying database interaction and querying and manipulating database records. Developers can leverage Laravel’s eloquent ORM to define connections between various database tables using intuitive syntax.

The powerful ORM of Laravel also allows developers to perform complicated queries without much effort. The abstraction layer of Laravel can enhance code readability, which delivers database portability and reduces overall development time. It ensures that businesses can offer value to their customers.

2. Easy Data Management

Database transactions are important for ensuring data integrity and maintaining the consistency of the database. The Laravel development helps to prevent data corruption and ensures that changes to your database are executed reliably. Without transactions, simultaneous access to your database could result in data loss or inconsistent data.

In the Laravel framework, database transactions are addressed using the Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) or built-in query builder. Laravel delivers a convenient and straightforward way to handle transactions.

3. Middleware

Middleware offers a convenient procedure for filtering and inspecting HTTP requests entering your site or web application. For instance, Laravel comes with a middleware that authenticates the user of your web application. In case the user turns out to be unauthenticated, the middleware will redirect the user to the login screen of the application. For authenticated users, the middleware will allow them to proceed with the requests.

Laravel also allows developers to write additional middleware to perform other tasks, such as CSRF protection.

4. Robust Built-in Security Features

Developers need to make their web applications as secure as possible to maintain business integrity. A website collects data from multiple sources, including personal customer data. Laravel developers will leverage the built-in security features to protect the data against external security breaches. Some of the advanced security features offered by Laravel that make your application highly secure include:

• Authentication System
• Cross-site scripting
• SQL injection
• Cookie protection
• Password hashing
• Cross-site request forgery
• Protection against CSRF

Laravel has an advanced authentication system and Bcrypt hashing for passwords. Users can be assured of full protection of their data shared with web applications or sites.

5. Up To Date With Modern PHP

Laravel is popular among developers and enterprises alike for its quick adoption of the new PHP features. It holds all the new PHP features by constantly updating the framework and supporting the latest ones. For instance, Laravel 8, which was released to the public in September 2020, requires the PHP framework 7.3 or higher. Laravel is committed to staying updated on the latest PHP features.

6. Routing

It is essential to develop robust APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to facilitate smooth integration with third-party services, mobile apps, and other systems. The Laravel framework comes with a RESTful routing system that helps to make your APIs more intuitive and efficient. It enables developers to define resourceful routes and handle HTTP requests effectively. It creates RESTful APIs by following the best industry practices. It enables businesses and enterprises to expose data and functionality securely, which improves interoperability and scalability.

7. Built-in Support For Authorization And Authentication

Controlling access to resources and organizing authorization is simple with Laravel. Testing and authorization with Laravel are completed with a single command. It also offers testing support with PHPUnit and dedicated file setup. It consists of all essential techniques, such as subscription, login, and password reset, to ensure complete authorization.

It has other methods as well that assist you with expressive testing to provide simple troubleshooting options and basic user simulations such as form filling and link clicking.

8. Elegant And Expressive Syntax

Laravel comes with an expressive and elegant syntax that makes it easier for developers to write maintainable and readable code. It comes with a more readable and shorter syntax that ensures fewer errors when writing codes and reduced development time.

Also, a shorter code reduces the cognitive time needed to understand the code.

Disadvantages of Laravel Development

Laravel comes with a plethora of benefits that are worth exploring when developing a web application or website. However, Laravel developers may face certain challenges as well when developing an application using Laravel. Some disadvantages of Laravel development include:

1. Lightweight framework

Laravel framework comes with a comprehensive range of built-in features that developers can use to make their web application development faster. However, when compared with other frameworks for web development, Laravel has fewer features and is often classified by developers as lightweight software. Even though you can build large and robust web applications using Laravel, the task can be complicated and tedious to complete.

2. Third-Party Extensions

Laravel does not come with built-in authentication mechanisms. Developers may face issues with security and comparability when integrating third-party extensions.

3. High Cost

Well, Laravel is definitely not the cheapest web application development framework that you will come across. The Laravel developer cost depends on various factors based on the specific requirements and the level of customisation asked for by the client.

4. Limited Support

Unfortunately, support for Laravel is not as easy as with other web frameworks. Developers will find it difficult to get support for the software, which can increase the system downtime.

5. Always Updating

Laravel comes with frequent updates, which is great, but the older versions of the software may become buggy quickly. Also, the Laravel developers may face challenges when updating new versions of the framework.

6. Performance Optimization

Laravel is not the top web framework when it comes to speed and performance optimization.

When to Use Laravel and Alternative Frameworks

You may choose Laravel development if you are looking for a web framework for your next project and want to have a few specific advantages. Laravel comes with various features and that is the reason it is effectively used in Rapid development, Scalable applications, Complex web apps, RESTful APIs, E-commerce platforms, Content management systems, Enterprise applications, and Startups and MVPs.

Conclusion

The benefits of the Laravel software have outweighed its cons, making it a top web development framework. Just like other frameworks, it excels in multiple areas but fails in some. Hiring a top Laravel development company will ensure that your web application is maintained properly and bugs are fixed timely. If you are planning to hire Laravel developers, make sure to review their past projects to understand whether they will be able to meet the functional and technical needs of your web applications.