Introduction to PHP Laravel

What is laravel?

Laravel is a free and open-source PHP web framework,[3] created by Taylor Otwell and intended for the development of web applications following the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern and based on Symfony. Some of the features of Laravel are a modular packaging system with a dedicated dependency manager, different ways for accessing relational databases, utilities that aid in application deployment and maintenance, and its orientation toward syntactic sugar.

Why to use Laravel?

1. Elegant Syntax and Developer-Friendly: Laravel follows an elegant and expressive syntax, which makes it easy for developers to read and write code. It encourages the use of clean and organized code, leading to increased developer productivity and maintainability.
2. Modularity and MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. This promotes the separation of concerns, making it easier to manage and scale applications. It allows developers to work on different components of the application independently.
3. Built-in Features and Libraries: Laravel comes with a wide range of built-in features and libraries that simplify common tasks like authentication, routing, caching, and session management. These features save development time and effort, allowing developers to focus on building the core functionality of the application.
4. Eloquent ORM: Laravel’s Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) simplifies database operations by providing an intuitive and expressive syntax for working with databases. It allows developers to interact with the database using PHP objects and methods, reducing the need for writing raw SQL queries.
5. Security: Laravel takes security seriously and provides several built-in features to help developers build secure applications. It includes features like CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) protection, data validation, and secure password hashing.
6. Community and Ecosystem: Laravel has a large and active community of developers, which means that you can find a wealth of resources, tutorials, and packages to extend the functionality of your application. The ecosystem around Laravel is vibrant and constantly evolving.
7. Artisan CLI: Laravel’s command-line interface (Artisan) allows developers to perform various tasks with just a few commands. It simplifies tasks like database migrations, generating boilerplate code, and running tests.
8. Testing Support: Laravel comes with built-in support for writing and running tests. This encourages developers to adopt test-driven development (TDD) practices, leading to more robust and reliable applications.
9. Scalability: While Laravel is well-suited for small to medium-sized applications, it can also handle larger and more complex projects. By leveraging features like queues and caching, you can scale your application as needed.
10. Documentation and Support: Laravel has extensive documentation that is easy to follow, making it simpler for developers to get started and find solutions to their problems. Additionally, the Laravel community provides active support through forums, chat channels, and social media.

Installing Laravel

You need to have composer installed in order to run Laravel then run this command.

composer create-project laravel/laravel example-app 

That’s it you have a basic laravel application that works. You can run the application by using the following commands.

cd example-app

php artisan serve

Your application will be up and running on http://127.0.0.1:8000

Customizing the home page

You can customize the home page by going into the directory

/resources/views/welcome.blade.php

Here you can customize the home page using the Laravel’s blade templating language.