Web apps are highly popular these days. The widespread use of web applications like Google Docs, Trello, Youtube, etc., is backed by some critical factors such as improved efficiency, faster processing, easy scalability, and many more. As almost every IT firm leverages some sort of web app for functioning, the scope of opportunities is wide for web app development companies.

If you have a web app development IT company, you need faster and efficient software for app development. As per Forbes, Laravel is the only PHP-based web app framework that ranks in the top 5 list. Therefore, if you want to scale faster in the app development business, you need to hire dedicated Laravel developers.

In the following sections, we will help you uncover all the unique features and benefits of using Laravel. On top of that, we will also talk about some Laravel trends and some new additions in Laravel 8!

A Quick Overview of Laravel!

Laravel is one of the most popular web app frameworks. It is a PHP-based software that uses MVC (Model View Control) architecture as its base.

This powerful framework fetches data from relational databases. The IT shops can connect it with almost any major platform, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle Database, and many more.

Although Laravel is a great choice in all aspects, it is primarily used to handle things such as:

• Authentication
• Routing
• Templating HTML
• Data manipulation
• Email verification

And more! As the framework follows the MVC architecture, here is how it works!

• The model is the shape in which data is kept. For instance, a list or table. If a table with numerical data is stored, it is the model.
• The controller is the part that houses the logic of the web app. For example, if a user requests to see the data of the table, the controller connects to fetch the data. If any changes in the data are requested by the user, the controller appends new data in the table.
• The view is the display part of the architecture. When the user requests to see the data, the controller constructs the view based on the data in the model. In short, the view forms the front end of the web app.

Why use Laravel Web Development?

There are many reasons to use Laravel. Being one of the trending PHP frameworks around the world, Laravel has countless unique features and benefits. Let’s explore them!

Security

Security is the number one aspect that every web development company looks for in a framework. Laravel is built with security as its core. It follows secure coding practises and makes use of the best-in-class security tools to prevent any kind of vulnerabilities.

The best thing here is that your passwords are stored in an encrypted format. Laravel uses a bcrypt hashing algorithm for storing passwords. On top of that, Laravel also promises safety from unauthorised access by creating a token every time a user logs into the system.

The framework also uses prepared SQL statements that prevent the injection of arbitrary SQL. The developer makes use of prepared statements in Laravel that destroy any possibility of SQL injections.

These are some of the prime features of Laravel. But, this is not it. There are other security features too, such as:

• HTTP secure authentication
• Reset and password alert
• Manually logging in users
• Authentication drivers

Automated testing

There is nothing more important than testing in the Laravel web development cycle. Therefore, having robust and efficient testing mechanisms is necessary. Laravel passes all of these requirements by providing Selenium and Laravel Dusk support.

Not only this, but Laravel also provides unit-level testing and automated testing features. The automated testing feature is ideal for both short-term as well as long-term development projects.

Scalability

One of the major reasons for using Laravel is its scalability. This highly customizable framework can be used for both small as well as large web apps, thus enabling you to maintain software cost-effectively.

What makes it so scalable?

Laravel provides an option to set up your own custom authentication drivers and restore lost sessions with ease. It also enables the developer to create database migrations easily. Even developers have complete flexibility to implement a locking mechanism that prevents multi-version updates at any point in time.

Blade Engine

No doubt, templates are important in web app development. However, not all frameworks provide this feature. Laravel is one of the frameworks that come with a templating engine that allows you to use pre-defined templates for views.

Moreover, there also exists a blade view which makes it extremely easy to design SQL query output and conditional statements within your code. This IDE provides pre-written HTML elements and custom directives to be used in projects efficiently without any coding difficulties involved.

The Blade templating engine ensures that you face very less hassle while writing code by simplifying the syntax of the code extensively.

Handy Full-Stack Tools

Laravel offers a well-developed toolset that includes many command-line utilities that enable developers to carry out complex tasks in just one line! Not only this, but it also offers IDE plugins for Vim, Emacs, etc., which makes development smoother than ever before! Laravel is hands down one of the best frameworks around when it comes to saving your time and efforts.

Eloquent ORM

One of the key features that attract web application companies towards the Laravel framework is the Eloquent ORM. The developer gets a lot of flexibility to customise the database structure according to the requirements.

Laravel provides powerful attributes and classes that can be used for controlling fields, methods, and accessors. This makes it easier for devs to build these relations without any hassles!

Artisan

The artisan command-line utility is one of the best things about Laravel. It speeds up coding and enhances development productivity to a great extent. This enables developers to create table structure, migrations (and even seeding) within minutes!

It also provides various other utilities such as creating basic auth scaffold, controllers, middleware, etc., which helps in quick start-up and saves a lot of time in application development.

All these features make Laravel a wanted framework.

What’s new in Laravel 8?

Just like the previous versions of Laravel. Laravel 8 also came packed with some useful features. Let’s take a look at these features!

The return of Models directory

When Laravel 5 was released, there was an outrage among the developer’s community. Why?

Laravel completely took away the models directory from the apps directory (app/Models). Though all the models were created in the apps directory just like before, some developers who preferred a specific models directory were not happy with it.

With Laravel 8, the Models directory is back. Developers can remove the old nuisance and create models in the Models directory just like before. However, if any of you prefer the apps directory, you can do it that way too.

The out-of-the-box Jetstream

The framework version 8 comes with the Jetstream feature that targets to resolve a lot of development issues for a Laravel development company.

The features offered by Laravel Jetstream are as follows:

• Email verification
• Login registration
• Two-factor authentication
• Session tracking
• Team management
• Laravel Sanctum API support

On top of these, Jetstream also offers options for scaffolding too. These two options are:

1. Inertia + Vue.js (the templating language offers various facilities without the need for any client-side routing).
2. Livewire + Blade (it offers a library that is responsive as well as dynamic)

Migration Squashing

The migration squashing feature is basically a way of resolving the issue when developers roll back the migrations. Laravel 8 offers to squash multiple migration files down into a single SQL file in order to avoid this hassle.

The commands used to do this are:

php artisan schema:dump
php artisan schema:dump --prune

One benefit is that it saves space. The other benefit is that when developers run the migration, the created master SQL file is executed first than any other file in the migration folder.

Job Batching

Until now, Laravel used to execute jobs as a part of the queue. However, in the new Laravel 8 update, the job batching feature has transformed the way jobs are handled. Multiple jobs are executed parallelly.

There is no need for developers to worry about job completion or failure status. The methods used by the framework like catch, then, and finally inform the developers about the job status via a callback.

Maintenance Mode

Laravel 8 came up with some innovative changes in the maintenance mode. Unlike earlier versions, where developers had to define specific IPs that could access the application while in maintenance mode. The new version has a “secret” option to handle the accessing issue easily.

The “secret” option can be used to create a bypass token. This token is passed to the browser whenever a developer is trying to use the app in maintenance mode. It ensures that a Laravel development services provider does not face any problems.

Cleaner syntax

The syntax is the backbone of every programming framework. When it comes to Laravel, the latest version is a bit smarter than the previous ones. In the previous versions, the syntax of the closure-based event listeners included defining the class, registering the closure, and hinting at the event class.

The newer syntax does not require you to define the event class first, but the framework understands it from the
argument. Therefore, saving you some time and making the code cleaner.

All these features make Laravel development services providers stick to it! Moreover, the surfacing of new Laravel trends has made it more popular. Here are some of them where it is used:

• Blockchain technology
• Micro-frontends
• PHP outsourcing
• Chatbots
• Enterprise applications

Laravel has been up to the mark in terms of updates. Moreover, it provides support to Google App Engine with ease. All this makes it one of the most sought-after frameworks for PHP development.

The updated version comes with some new features, which are added due to customer feedback. Laravel 8 is more customizable, scalable, and easy to use, making it an ideal choice for building big projects.

Therefore, development companies can expect the need to hire Laravel developers in the near future!