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If someone is looking for web development, then the developers always prefer and opt for PHP frameworks only. The selection of the development framework makes it easier for the developers to develop different mobile applications, handle things more smoothly, and that too with the minimal coding. And if using PHP based development frameworks then there are multiple advantages like it recommends the best coding styles, methodologies, and practices. Companies hire developers in order to utilize the development frameworks in the best possible way and provide the company with bets on the mobile applications. Now, as the framework is considered as the foundation of any project, it should be a very wise decision to make selection of an apt development framework.
There are a number of options available in the PHP development framework which includes the name Codelgniter, Slim Framework, Yii, Zend, Symfony, Nette, Fuel PHP, Laravel. Now Laravel and Symfony are considered the best PHP frameworks in the market as of today. Symfony Development Company has earned its name in the market as the best solution provider and clients are getting enormous advantages out of it. Symfony Development Services are widely used all across the world due to their ever-growing advantages. So, let’s first understand the basic concept of both frameworks.
WHAT IS LARAVEL?
The Laravel Framework was developed by Taylor Otwell in June 2011. When it was launched, until then Codelgniter was considered as the best PHP development framework. With time it evolved itself and developed itself into the fully qualified MVC framework. And still with every release of the latest version they keep on adding the new functionalities supported by certain features. For example, the latest version of Laravel which was released in September 2020 includes new features like migration squashing, Jetstream, model factory classes, and Pagination View supported by Tailwind. It is considered as one of the best frameworks for the big enterprises and specifically for web artisans.
As it is an MVC framework based on PHP, it always tries to provide certain functions which ultimately reduces the complexity of the app development. It has got a huge community to support and the official forum of Laravel is the Laracasts Discuss site. Now let’s look into pros and cons of Laravel:
PROS OF LARAVEL:
a)The email services and app integration are allowed in Laravel through API.
b)It is supported by a large number of tools.
c)It remains updated with the latest version of PHP features.
d)Easy compatible with third party libraries and platforms.
CONS OF LARAVEL:
a)The newer version of Laravel is not compatible and the codes can easily be broken.
b)Few of the built-in applications of Laravel might interrupt the faster loading on mobile due to its heavy size.
WHAT IS Symfony?
Symfony was launched in the year 2005 but the stable version was launched in two forms, version 1 and 2, and the recent one was in 2011. The latest version of Symfony was launched in July 2020. This PHP framework is owned by Sensio Labs and is released under the license of MIT. But like Laravel, it is not a true MVC framework, it is a set of reusable PHP components, a PHP web application framework.
Symfony 2 is designed like a set of decoupled components that have its own benefits like-any components that can be replaced in the Symfony Project and also one can take and use any kind of Symfony component in a non-Symfony project. The Symfony community is again a huge group of 3,00,000 developers from around 120 countries. Many well-established projects include the components of Symfony like Drupal, Joomla, Magento etc. Below given are pros and cons of Symfony:
PROS OF Symfony:
a)It is supported by one of the biggest communities of developers.
b)It keeps on updating itself regularly as per the changing needs and requirements of the developers.
c)Some of the popular platforms which have been using Symfony are published, Magento, Drupal, etc.
CONS OF Symfony:
a)The learning curve of Symfony is quite typical and critical than other PHP frameworks.
b)The overall development process here is quite slower as more time is required in testing. And the testing is more time-consuming here because of the requirement of pre-built code for different uses.
c)Laravel does not have its own elements and depends on other technologies due to which few of the web applications might take time to load.
A DETAILED COMPARISON OF LARAVEL Vs Symfony:
Now let’s do an in-depth comparison between both the PHP development frameworks on the basis of different parameters. This will give us an idea of which one to select on the basis of the requirement.
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Requirement of Server
Laravel’s server requirements are more than Symfony. Laravel needs Composer, Tokenizer PHP extension, Mbstring PHP Extension, PDO PHP Extension, PHP >= 5.6.4, XML PHP Extension. And Symfony requires ctype Extension, PHP >= 5.5.9, php.ini should have the date. timezone setting.
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Templating Engine
The blade is the default templating engine of Laravel which allows reusing the code. The blade is a simple yet very powerful templating engine. Also, it adds zero overheads to the application. Another sub-framework used is Lumen that makes it perfect for building the APIs. Symfony uses Twig as the default templating engine which was developed by Fabien Potencier and helps to write readable and concise templates which are very useful for web designers.
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Installation
Composer facilitates the easy installation of the development framework, Laravel. The process is to first download Laravel and then use the Composer command by installing the new Laravel. But in the case of Symfony, there are several ways to install it. Few of them are intended for the purpose of development and some of them are global.
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Scaling and Modularity
Symfony uses reusable components which ensures robust modularity, and the code is also organized in a better way. And in the case of Laravel, it utilizes MVC based apps with a number of pre-built dependencies. This is the reason it becomes quite stringent and less flexible, but still, it is more user-friendly.
e) Internationalization
Bothe the development frameworks support the translations which make it compatible with internationalization. Additionally, Laravel offers the localization features and Symfony has an option of configuring the translator. But one of the main differences is that Laravel uses JSON files and PHP to store the localization data while Symfony favors different kinds of translation formats like CSV, INI, Qt, and many more.
f) Routing function
The routing function in Symfony allows one to define the routing in annotation format like YAML, XML, or maybe PHP. But in Laravel, the routing system works in simple PHP. But still both the frameworks have their own set of superlative features which cover different causes and purposes.
g) Migration of the Database
In Laravel, the database migration is manual and there is no need of defining the required fields. But in Symfony, the Data migration happens by default, which means automatically and requires very simple definitions for the respective fields and that too within the given models.
h) Learning curve and Popularity
Laravel is properly documented which helps in better understanding. Laravel documentation, Codebright, Sitepoint, Treehouse, Laracasts discussion forum provides several learning tutorials. Even Laravel GitHub documents provide extensive and detailed information. Symfony is also supported by around 6 lac developers from a wide number of countries, and this helps to resolve the bugs, fix the identified errors and more. But overall Laravel seems to be more popular than Symfony.
CONCLUSION:
The above points show that both the development frameworks are appropriate for developing a wide range of web development and mobile application projects. And to distinguish, if any developer is looking for fast performance, high speed, and rapid development, then one should opt for Laravel development companies. But Symfony development services are used for developing complex and large-scale web applications. So, accordingly, the developers and the businessperson can decide.