How many web development challenges can the Laravel PHP framework help you solve? How much easier/faster does it make it for you to tackle common developer tasks?
These are the 2 main questions that we'll try to answer in this blog post here.
For the faster you'll be solving inevitable problems rising during your web app's development process, the more time you'll gain for sparking your creativity working on the app-specific logic!
So, speaking of the common development challenges and how they can make the best criteria for choosing your most suitable web framework, let us enlist them! Outlining, as well, how precisely Laravel can help you easily overcome them:
1. Addressing Technical Vulnerabilities
The challenge you're facing: fixing technical (and therefore “security”, as well) vulnerabilities that will inevitably “infiltrate” your web app during its development process (e.g. cross-site scripting, SQL injection etc.)
Laravel's solution:
- it comes equipped with a shield against all major security vulnerabilities
- its codebase has been constantly examined and monitored by hundreds of developer eyes
- it restricts unauthorized users' access to your apps' crucial data or paid resources
2. Error and Exception Handling
The challenge you're facing:
- configuring your app so that it properly handles errors (data-entry forms being the most frequent “error generators”)
- triggering prompt notifications (error messages) to let the user know that he/she has entered incorrect data
Laravel's solution:
- error handling is already configured
- moreover, the PHP framework already incorporates the Monolog logging library, a powerful support for a multitude of long handlers
- it runs regular updates in order to minimize errors on your website/app
3. Creating a Custom and Secure Authentication and Authorization System
The challenge you're facing: putting together an user authorization and authentication system so that unauthorized users shouldn't gain access to your app's paid resources/critical data
Laravel's solution:
- it puts at your disposal, right out-of-the-box, everything you need for building your authentication system
- in addition, it makes structuring your authorization logic very simple
- it grants you full control to all the needed resources
4. Separating Client Side/Presentation Code from Server-Side/Business Logic Code
The challenge you're facing:
- helping your web designers “grow independent” from their developer co-workers by making all the needed changes to your web app's HTML layout themselves
- also, by drawing a clear line between presentation and logic from an early stage in the web development process you'll be enabling developers, too, to fix bugs and to add on new features a lot faster
Laravel's solution: being an MVC framework, the “presentation logic-business logic separation issue” is solved by default!
5. Configuring a Scheduler and Managing Scheduled Tasks
The challenge you're facing: putting in place some sort of task scheduling system (and by “task” we do refer to automated database table cleanups, to regular emails to be sent out automatically to subscribers from your list etc.)
Laravel's solution:
- its built-in command scheduler enables you to configure your schedule from within Laravel
- just one Crone entry on your server will be more than enough
6. Configuring Delivery Delays, Managing Queued Messages
The challenge you're facing:
- putting together a message queue mechanism in the early stage of development for better handling that “heavy” load of requests (per second) that your web server's challenged with
- a queue mechanism that should minimize risks of data loss and improve page loading time by speeding up web requests
Laravel's solution: its queue services “spoils” you with a unified API, irrespective of the queue back-end type
7. Scheduling Automated Tests With Laravel PHP Framework
The challenge you're facing: initializing automated testing sessions, which are much more time-effective and usually more accurate than the standard manual ones
Laravel's solution:
- luckily for you the Laravel PHP framework comes with out-of-the-box PHPunit tests and a phpunit.xml file
- moreover, it's equipped with functionalities enabling expressive testing by simulating common user behaviors (link clicking, filling out forms and so on)
8. Configuring URL Routing
The challenge you're facing: defining a clean and simple URL routing so that your app should clearly understand the user's intention, specifically which page he/she'd like to navigate to
Laravel's solution:
- you'll find all your Laravel PHP framework's routes in its app/Http/routes.php file (don't worry, it will load by default)
- the basic ones accept Closure and URI, allowing you to easily configure your routes
9. Integrating Your Web App With Mail Services
The challenge you're facing: building a system sending out notifications to your subscribers following key events
Laravel's solution:
- it provides a simple, yet powerful and clean API over the SwiftMailer library
- it also provides you with drivers for Mandrill, SparkPost, Mailgun, SMTP, Amazon SES, Sendmail, PHP's mail function; a “plug and play” solution for your app to instantly send out emails either via a local or via a cloud-based service
- it also offers you support for sending out notifications (so not just emails) via multiple channels: Slack, SMS via Nexmo...
10. Integrating Backend Caches for Boosting Performance
The challenge you're facing: boosting your web app's performance by integrating it with cache back-ends
Laravel's solution:
- Laravel PHP framework supports robust cache backends such as Redis and Memcached
- it's built to use the file cache driver by default (storing the cached components in its file system)
- moreover, it's even configured to efficiently handle multiple cache configurations
Summing Up
The Laravel PHP framework does streamline your basic development tasks (turning them from “challenges” into simple “to Do” tasks) helping you gain priceless time! Time that you can invest in “crafting code”.
Now we're more than curious to read your own thoughts about this web framework!
