Laravel is a free and open-source PHP web framework designed for building modern web applications. It was created by Taylor Otwell and follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which helps in organizing code and separating concerns within an application. Laravel is known for its elegant syntax and developer-friendly features, making it one of the most popular PHP frameworks available today.
Key Features of Laravel
MVC Architecture: Laravel's MVC architecture separates the application logic from the user interface, making the code more organized and easier to maintain. The Model handles the data, the View displays the data, and the Controller manages the interaction between the Model and the View[1][4][7].
Blade Templating Engine: Laravel includes a powerful templating engine called Blade, which allows developers to use plain PHP code in views and provides convenient shortcuts for common tasks like displaying data and creating forms[1][4][8].
Eloquent ORM: Eloquent is Laravel’s built-in Object Relational Mapper (ORM) that provides an easy way to interact with the database using an object-oriented syntax. It simplifies database operations and allows for defining relationships between models[1][2][8].
Artisan CLI: Artisan is Laravel’s command-line interface that helps automate repetitive tasks such as database migrations, seeding, and generating boilerplate code for models, controllers, and other components[1][2][8].
Routing: Laravel offers a simple and intuitive routing system that allows developers to map URLs to specific actions in the application, making it easy to create RESTful APIs and web applications[1][4][8].
Security: Laravel includes several built-in security features such as input validation, password hashing, and user authentication to help protect applications from common security threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS)[1][4][8].
Database Migrations: Laravel’s migration system allows developers to version control their database schema and make changes to the database structure without writing SQL queries. This feature is particularly useful for keeping the database schema in sync across different development environments[1][4][8].
