Laravel is an open source PHP framework. It was created by Taylor Otwell for the development of web applications. It follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural pattern for the web application development. It was designed as an alternative for CodeIgniter framework but it does not provide certain features for user authorization and authentication. The current stable release version is 5.4.
Features of Laravel:
1. Automatic Pagination:
It simplifies the method of implementing pagination. It can automatically set the proper limit and offset based on the current page viewed by the user.
2. View Composers:
It is one of the most important features of Laravel. It makes sure that the controllers load a bunch of data from models for views.
3. Multiple File System Support:
It provides multiple file system support by using the third party package Flysystem. It provides an option for developers to use local or cloud-based storage for simple configuration.
4. Unit testing:
The developers can write their own multiple unit tests easily with the Artisan command-line utility.
Advantages of Laravel:
1. It is best suited for building RESTful APIs.
2. Developers can easily organize the database of the app using Object-Relational Mapping (ORM).
3. It has its own command-line interface called Artisan for performing abundant tasks.
4. It has object-oriented libraries and the usage of libraries and models is easier. Its libraries are supported with autocomplete feature.
The disadvantage of Laravel:
It is limited in finding the answer when compared with Cake PHP and CodeIgniter.