Laravel vs Other PHP Frameworks

Introduction

Laravel is leading the battle in the listing of Top PHP frameworks since last few years. Here are some of the reasons for this dominance:

• Authorization Technique
• Object-Oriented Libraries
• Artisan
• MVC Support
• Security
• Database Migration
• Database Template Engine
• Great Tutorial (Laracasts)
• Lumen Micro-Framework

Let’s compare the top 3 PHP frameworks to see whether Laravel really tops the list –

• Laravel
• Symfony
• Yii

Laravel vs Symfony

Let’s talk about Code Organization

Symfony has provided reusable components and it has provided better modularity. While these frameworks use MVC architecture to develop web applications.
Symfony framework is better for complex applications and can use most of the components in a modular fashion in one project.

The difference is about template engine. Symfony uses Twig while Laravel has its own template engine i.e Blade.
Blade template engine is better than Twig due to is code reusability. There is no any need to define a function twice, like in Twig.

Symfony uses following patterns
Factory, Composite, QueryBuilder, Flyweight, Observer, Dependency Injection and Data Mapper
While Laravel uses following patterns
Builder, Factory, Repository, Strategy, Provider, Facade, ActiveRecord and Dependency Injection

Performance and scalability

Average loading time for a website with Laravel is 60 ms while with Symfony its near about 250ms.
As both caching views and Laravel has built with Symfony, but Laravel is faster when Symfony caching source code.

Documentation and learning curve

Laravel has more tutorials and learning videos than Symfony. Laracast has covered all the detailing about Laravel framework.
While Symfony has basic documentation.

Laravel vs Yii

Template Engine

Yii has quite an easy directory structure than Symfony, so on comparison with the directory structure of Laravel and Yii is pretty simplified.
There is no such default template engine for Yii and Laravel has its own template engine.

Migrations

Both these frameworks have convenient migration systems. Laravel has effective testing procedure over Yii.

Validation

Laravel has no scenario based validation while Yii has scenario based validation.
On the client side, Laravel needs to have custom code everything but for Yii, you need to define set of rules to validate from.

Routing

Need to declare route for each and every action for all controller while in Yii we do not need to declare route to each and every action.

Documentation

As per Laravel Yii does not have strong documentation available but still Yii it is pretty well organized.

Resources and Support

Laravel has a large community with good support and it’s growing every day, though its new framework as compared to other from 2012.
Yii framework comes on 2008 and it also has a large community with good support but not like Laravel.

Conclusion

In the end, right now Laravel is most popular PHP framework for web application. You can also use Yii and Symfony as per your choice, but it would not be the smartest choice.