PHP Laravel vs. Symfony: A detailed comparison of web development frameworks

Why begin from a scratch when you have your personal programming assistance software

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Introduction

Application designing is a tedious process. Developing a responsive, user-friendly, and versatile application requires crushing yourself under piles of codes. To simplify the process a bit, programmers use frameworks like Laravel application development, which are specially designed to assist in the process of web application development.

In this blog, we’ll be going through a detailed discussion about two versatile frameworks- 

• PHP Laravel 
• Symfony 

We will compare them to find out which suits your requirements the best. 

Why should you use a framework?

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Coding an application is a complicated task. Developers need to take care of syntax, garbage collection, statements, etc. Using a framework for coding will simplify the coding process by conferring the following advantages:

• Assistance in coding, designing, and testing of applications.
• Security of codes.
• Avoids repetitions and recurrence of codes.
• Developing complicated websites using minimal coding.
• It provides time efficiency.
• Easy debugging, etc.

Frameworks like Symfony development services are much popular among developers. The selection of a good framework is very important for developing an impressive website. 

Thus, we will discuss the two highlighted frameworks and analyze which framework is better.

PHP Laravel

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Launched in 2011, PHP Laravel is an application development framework, designed with the aim of developing a robust web application with minimal coding. 

Laravel development company has created a platform for web application developers and enthusiasts for developing:

• impressive web applications
• responsive web applications
• user-friendly web applications.

Laravel development company, for catering to the requirements of the web artisans, has created a hybrid ecosystem, comprising of tools like 

• serverless platform- Vapor, 
• queue monitoring tool- Horizon, 
• the administrative pane-Nova, and many more. 

The MVC PHP framework is well equipped with tools that make it better than a lot of other frameworks (which we will discuss in the comparison section). The developers have created a system that is simple to use and syntax is much easy to learn. Thus, PHP Laravel is a reliable framework and is very useful for designing an impressive website. 

Symfony

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The developers of the Symfony web application framework designed the multifaceted tool for breaking down the complexity of the coding procedures. The framework is one of the most popular frameworks in the industry, used by a large number of programmers. 

The Symfony development services have built a robust framework with decoupled and reusable components, which are the basis of development for most of the PHP web applications, including Drupal, phpBB, etc.

Symfony’s road to success! 

This framework is not confined just to Symfony web development services and web application development. Used by millions of programmers, Symfony has successfully created a community, comprising over 6,00,000 passionate developers from over 120 countries, all working together and sharing the same level of ardency for web application development. 

Did you know?

Symfony’s popularity becomes much more evident with over 480,000,000 downloads.  

Comparison and analysis

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Choosing the right framework is crucial since codes are the foundation of every web application. 

We have declared a race between two frameworks- Laravel and Symfony and now, let’s declare a winner….

• Most number of downloads

According to the Google trends, PHP Laravel outshines Symfony in the number of downloads. According to the trends, Laravel is at the apex on the list of the most downloaded framework, followed by Symfony.   

Though both the frameworks occupy eminent positions in the list of most downloaded frameworks, still PHP Laravel is a much more preferred framework. 

Winner:

Laravel is able to provide a high-end support system through Laracasts, where Symfony lacks.

Laravel has been used more than Symfony in almost every field, with Laravel developing 9091 websites, while Symfony developing 2559 websites in the business and industry sector. I

• Modularity and scaling 

Symfony uses decoupled and reusable components. This enables it to 

• organize 
• segregate and 
• present the code in a much cleaner way. 

The framework possesses great potential for handling larger and complicated projects and thus, the framework has been successful in capturing a large market segment.

On the other hand, Laravel shows its gallop for MVC-based apps only. Laravel’s scope seems to vanish as you start thinking beyond MVC-based apps. 

Winner:

Thus, in handling larger volumes of codes efficiently and in the aspect of modularity, Symfony has an upper hand. 

• Templating engines

Templating engines specialize in providing advanced templating with minimal coding. Talking about the default Templating engine, Laravel’s templating engine ‘Blade’ provides much more than Symfony’s ‘Twig’.

Blade facilitates code reusability, where Twig lacks behind. Laravel also came up with Lumen, which is a sub-framework designed to build APIs and microservices.

• Databases

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Both the frameworks work on ORM i.e. Object-Relation Mapping for accessing the data. This mapping is handled by Doctrine for Symfony and by Eloquent for Laravel. This makes data manipulation much simpler and efficient.      

Winner:

Symfony is able to provide many more options for databases than Laravel. Thus, in the race of database support, Symfony outshines Laravel.          

• Database migration

Symfony provides an automatic database migration. You can work on Symfony just by defining simple fields for modeling. On the other hand, Laravel operates on manual database migration. But Laravel bridges the gap as there’s no need for defining any field. 

Winner:

There is no clear winner in this aspect. 

Conclusion

Both the frameworks are well equipped with features a programmer needs for developing a versatile web application. In this race, we can’t say which framework has the upper hand. Both the frameworks have their own strengths and weaknesses, which is evident by their eminent positions on the list of most popular frameworks.