With the increased usage of mobile in person’s day to day life, the need for mobile and web applications have also increased, and developers are continuously thriving on the best way to develop the apps and web pages. And while developing the apps, it is very important to select the suitable building blocks which means selection of a good PHP framework. PHP Development Companies often prefer to use a development framework which makes the process of application development quite easier, and one can have better control with minimum coding. The PHP framework recommends you the amazing coding style, techniques, and different practices. But in the market, there are a wide range of options available for the PHP frameworks like Slim Framework, Phalcon, Cake PHP, Symphony, Zend Framework, Laravel and many more. But the two of them that stand out as the best PHP framework are Symphony and Laravel. The companies hire dedicated developers who could work upon these frameworks to give the best output.
Now deciding upon which one is best is quite difficult as both of them have their own pros and cons which one should be definitely aware of before going ahead with anyone, Laravel or Symphony. Let us first quickly understand in detail about Laravel and Symphony.
LARAVEL:
Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that follows Model-View-Controller pattern and was introduced in June 2011 by Taylor Otwell. It possesses all the basic features of different PHP frameworks like Codelgniter or Ruby on Rails which helps to develop various web applications. Laravel development company has seen a rise in demand for PHP framework since they were introduced.
Laravel Development Services simplifies most of the typical processes and activities used in most parts of the projects like authentication queuing, routing, and caching. So, if any user has to create a simple PHP application, then this is a framework with an approach of simple code that ultimately reduces the development time as well.
Pros of Laravel:
- a) Very compatible with the third-party libraries and platforms
- b) Always updated with the latest PHP features
- c) Allows the integration of apps and email services through API
- d) Supported by a large eco-system of add-on tools
Cons of Laravel:
- a) Some of the apps built on Laravel is heavy to be loaded quickly on mobile
- b) The regular updates are not at all compatible
SYMPHONY:
It is again an open-source framework based on PHP and is used for developing complex enterprise level web applications which also employs the updated web technologies. It is highly influenced by Spring Framework and utilizes the existing Open-source PHP projects like Twig for template engine, PHP unit for testing framework etc.
Pros of Symphony:
- a) Supported by a huge community of developers
- b) Keeps on upgrading itself regularly to meet the requirements of developers
c)Many popular platforms use Symphony like Magento & Drupal
Cons of Symphony:
- a) Overall, the development process is slower as the testing time is longer due to lack of pre-built codes
- b) Lack of original elements increases its dependency on other technologies
c)It is quite complicated to learn than any other PHP framework
HOW ARE LARAVEL & SYMPHONY SIMILAR?
There are few ways in which both the frameworks sounds very similar to each other:
- a) Both the framework uses PHP as their programming language.
- b) They are cross-platform framework thus, can be implemented across multi-platforms.
c)Both are multi-language content and multi-user
d)Each framework provides the scaffolding of the application which helps to define the structure. It also provides patterns for interfaces and facilitates the search of text.
HOW ARE LARAVEL & SYMPHONY DIFFERENT?
Below mentioned are the parameters on the basis of which the differences between Laravel and Symphony is explained:
- a) Templating Engine
Laravel uses Blade as a powerful templating engine which allows the re-usability of the code. Also, Lumen is another sub-framework used by Laravel to build the APIs and microservices perfectly.
While Symphony uses Twig as the templating engine where the code re-usability is not allowed.
- b) Database support
Laravel utilizes ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) for accessing the data through Eloquent. It supports databases like My SQL, SQLite, SQL Server.
Symphony also uses ORM for accessing the Data through Doctrine. It supports databases like Drizzle, My SQL, SQLite, SQL server.
- c) Database Migrations
In Laravel, the database Migrations are manual and do not require defining fields.
In Symphony, the databases are migrated automatically and require just simple definitions for fields.
- d) Data Modelling
In Laravel, to access the data, one requires deep knowledge of SQL. Here Eloquent tends to tie the application to DB Schema design which makes it less flexible. Even a change in the name of a column can change the entire codebase.
Symphony does not require any significant knowledge of SQL but must create a repository function for each call. They use a mapper pattern by extension.
- e) Modularity & Scaling
Laravel utilizes the applications based on MVC with a huge number of pre-built dependencies which makes it quite still but more friendly to the users.
But here Symphony can use the reusable components which ensures the robust modularity, and the code is also organized in a much better and cleaner way and makes it apt for the larger and complex projects.
So, most of the PHP developers prefer Symphony over Laravel.
- f) Performance
The overall performance of the framework can be measured according to the loading speed of those sites built on these frameworks. The websites developed on Laravel takes around average speed of 60 milliseconds and around 250 milliseconds is the average speed of the websites developed on Symphony.
- g) Popularity
Popularity is not the correct criteria to decide upon selection of the PHP framework, but it is obvious that a lot of benefits accompany the framework which is followed by a huge number of developers.
So, if we talk about popularity then Laravel is ahead of Symphony. And as Laravel is more popular comparatively then it is backed up by lots of information available online related to its training and tutorials, online channels and many more data resources. For instance, Laracasts can provide valuable information about the Laravel framework which is not available for Symphony currently. Despite having detailed documentation about Symphony, it has not expanded itself much in terms of dispersing the information.
CONCLUSION:
The above points give a detailed idea about the advantages and disadvantages of both the PHP-based framework. One should try hands on both of them to experience how much help they are getting from both of these frameworks. It will help them to understand which technology is helping them to resolve their issues. So, the crucial points to be considered by the developer is what is their aim, what project they are working upon, what features are they looking for and what goal they want to achieve. Answers to these questions will help them to make a wise decision.
