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Hello and welcome to this introductory video to the PHP framework, Laravel
In this video we will be looking at When Laravel started and its progression towards its current version
Why developers use Laravel.
Its performance.
Pros and Cons of Laravel
Websites that use Laravel and the license behind it.
So to begin with, what is a framework?
A framework makes it easier for you to develop your application.
Most sites have a common set of functionality (like handling sessions, data validation, etc)
and a framework is something that prevents you from re-writing this each time you create a website
All in all it makes a developer's life easier when creating and maintaining websites.
When did Laravel Start
Laravel version 1 beta was released on June the 9th 2011 by its creator, Taylor Otwell.
here were a few frameworks before Laravel,
CodeIgniter being the the most popular
php developers loved its simplicity and documentation.
However CodeIgniter lacked standard functionality such as, authentication methods.
Laravel was created to fill in these gaps.
Laravel 1 had these built-in features such as authentication, Eloquent ORM, libraries for extendibility and much more.
However it didn't not follow a MVC framework yet because it didn't feature controllers.
Developers enjoyed the clean syntax and growing potential.
Laravel 2, was released on the 24th of November 2011
just 5 months after version 1 was released.
Laravel 2 fully qualified as MVC framework with the additions of controllers.
Other features were also introduced such as the blade templating engine
However developers weren't happy with the removal of 3rd party modules.
Laravel 3 was then released on the 22nd of February 2012
with a new website and features
Laravel 3 was centered around unit test integration
Artisan CL
data migrations and more
Laravel 3 starting to hold its weight against competitive frameworks as it was gaining traction
The Laravel community also began to bloom with posts, tutorials and lessons
Laravel 3 re-introduced the 3rd party modules as “bundles”.
Laravel 4 also known as Illuminate, was released on the 28th of May 2013
Although these fast releases indicated that Laravel was growing,
it did damage to the credibility of the framework
as developers labed it to fast-paced and unstable
Laravel 4 was rewritten from the ground up as a collection of components
that integrate with each other to compose of the Laravel framework.
These components could be installed through a dependency manager called “Composer”.
Laravel 4 also introduced new features that weren't in other frameworks
such as database seeding, mailer, message queues and more.
The latest version, Laravel 5 was released on the 4th of February 2015
This release introduced a fresh application structure as the the default project,
Route cache
improvements with regards to Artisan commands to speed up the registration of routes
Why should a developer use Laravel
Firstly, if you are moving over from a previous framework or want to just start using Laravel,
it can be very easy to adopt.
This is because developers find the documentation exceptional.
It is easy to read and presented in a simplistic way.
The community, in particular Laracast videos
can set new developers well on their way to start developing.
Because you can easy integrate 3rd party modules into your Laravel application
you can easily extend your application.
Using Eloquent Object-Relational Mapping Technique
developers don't have to write SQL anymore.
Routing in Laravel is very easy.
You can pass in parameters and constraints and you can group routes,
create resources for CRUD pages
Almost all web applications require a form of authentication and Laravel provides it for you
In terms of performance,
it doesn't have the best performance when compared to other php frameworks.
However with the release of new caching features such as Route Caching in version 5
it does pose a dramatic speed increase.
In the grand scheme of things
the speed doesn't have much importance unless your web application generates a lot of traffic
the speed doesn't have much importance unless your web application generates a lot of traffic
There are also other ways to speed up your application such as server optimizations and optimizing the framework itself.
Pros of Laravel.
The “Blade” templating engine provides a clean syntax for views.
It is also extendable and very fast
(compiles to PHP then caches the results
Database seeding can be used to automatically generate dummy records in your database
so you don't have to do it manually.
Composer, I mention this because
it allows you to only install the modules you need
so you don't have to bloat your application with features you won't be using.
Queuing, if your application has long running operations,
by using a queue, these operations can be done in the background
while the user isn't constraint to the operation
Sending Emails can prove to be a complicated job,
but Laravel provides a file for you to specify the credentials for the email to be sent.
Cons of Laravel.
Laravel is a new framework.
So, finding answers are still limited in comparison to CakePHP and CodeIgniter.
However, the forums and IRC seem to be quite active with helpful people,
so usually the answer is findable.
Laravel’s core files are all within the Laravel namespace which is inconsistent
Laravel also uses helper functions that make things difficult.
However not all developers have to worry about this unless you are delving into building your own service providers.
Performance as discussed is fairly poor but can be optimised.
Websites that use Laravel.
Morgans Hotel Group, Toyata Hall of Fame, Snappy and GoosePHP.
GoosePHP is a tool that makes it even easier and faster to get your website up and running with an extensive amount of features.
License of Laravel
MIT License
Free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation file
Be Careful of the components/dependencies used in your project.
include the license with the software
I hope this video has been very informative
Thank you for listening