Laravel

Laravel

Developer(s)	Taylor Otwell
Initial release	February 22, 2012 (2012-02-22)
Stable release	4.2.3 / June 11, 2014 (2014-06-11)
Repository	github.com/laravel/laravel
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Web application framework
License	MIT License
Website	laravel.com

Laravel is a free, open source PHP web application framework, designed for the development of model–view–controller (MVC) web applications. Laravel is released under the MIT license, with its source code hosted on GitHub.

According to a December 2013 developers survey on PHP frameworks popularity, Laravel is listed as the most popular PHP framework in 2013, followed by Phalcon, Symfony2, CodeIgniter and others.

Features

The following features serve as Laravel's key design points:

• Bundles provide Laravel with a modular packaging system, and numerous bundled features are already available for easy addition to applications.
• Eloquent ORM is an advanced PHP implementation of the active record pattern, providing internal methods for enforcing constraints to the relationships between database objects. Laravel's Fluent query builder is natively supported by Eloquent.
• Application logic is part of developed applications, either by using controllers, or as part of route declarations. Syntax used for definitions is similar to the one used by Sinatra framework.
• Reverse routing defines a relationship between links and routes, making it possible for later changes to routes to be automatically propagated into relevant links. When links are created by using names of existing routes, appropriate URIs are automatically created by Laravel.
• Restful controllers provide an optional way for separating the logic behind serving HTTP GET and POST requests.
• Class auto loading provides automated loading of PHP classes, without the need for manual maintenance of inclusion paths. On-demand loading prevents loading of unnecessary components; only the components which are actually used are loaded.
• View composers are logical code units that can be executed when a view is loaded.
• IoC container makes it possible for new objects to be generated by following the inversion of control principle, with optional instantiating and referencing of new objects as singletons.
• Migrations provide a version control system for database schemas, making it possible to associate changes in the application's code base and required changes in the database layout, easing deployment and updating of applications.
• Unit testing plays an important role in Laravel, which itself has a large number of tests for detecting and preventing regressions. Unit tests can be run through the artisan command-line utility.
• Automatic pagination simplifies the task of implementing pagination, replacing the usual manual implementation approaches with automated methods integrated into Laravel.

Conferences

Laracon is a conference centered around the Laravel framework. The first Laracon was held in Washington, D.C. on February 22–23, 2013, while the second Laracon was held in Amsterdam on August 30–31, 2013, as the first European Laracon. The third Laracon was held in New York City on May 15–16, 2014. All of these conferences are largely organized by UserScape with additional help provided by various sponsors.

See also

• Comparison of web application frameworks
• Comparison of web template engines

External links

• Official website
• Laravel 4.1 Documentation
• Laravel 4.1 API reference
• Laravel 3.x Documentation
• Laracon Conference
• History of Laravel
• Getting started with Laravel