Laravel vs Symfony : Chasing The Ideal PHP Framework

Choosing an equitable tech framework for your project can be really perplexing. It might even sound more difficult than the whole project!

This is because, the toughest challenge of development projects is to build quality websites and applications in the least possible time, cost and effort. Here, PHP makes the job easier by offering these features. Many popular web development languages have their “default” framework, such as Ruby on Rails for Ruby, or Django for Python. However, PHP has no such single default and has multiple popular options to choose from.

All in all, some general benefits of using PHP frameworks are:

• Faster development
• Organized and reusable code
• Scalability of web applications
• Separation of presentation and logic (under MVC pattern)
• Relevant practices and tools

But on the same hand there are various PFP frameworks available in app and web development market. 

However, Symfony and Laravel stand out with few of their amazing features. So is the confusion clear? Certainly not!

Infact, this lands up in the puddle of Symfony vs Laravel, which PHP framework to choose?

Let’s take a journey through both the frameworks and decide which will best suit your business. 

SYMFONY VS LARAVEL : SIMILARITIES BEFORE THE BATTLE

Before we start discussing about Symfony vs Laravel i.e. the differences, let’s first figure out what they have in common. As both of them are from the same background as in PHP, there are many features present in both.

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As seen, now we are well-acquainted with the common features of both the frameworks. It’s time to examine the specifics in order to know the difference and the ideal choice.

SYMFONY

Usually, Symfony is well-suited for large-scale or complex enterprise level projects. Helping developers in creating scalable websites that are flexible to changing business requirements, it is considered a s a stable network. Furthermore, it works just fine with some of the largest open source platforms such as PHPBB, Piwik, and Drupal.

Here are some of the key advantages:

Scalable

With a range of easy scalability options including optimizing propels, limiting the number of objects to hydrate, query minimization with joins and avoiding temporary arrays, Symfony promises high adaptability.

Speed

If implemented well, then the speed of Symfony equals the sum of the individual speeds of its features. In other words, its speed is the consequence of a series of choices that you made to decide whether a feature should make it to the core or not. Hence, with a proper and wise usage, it proves to be much faster than many other PHP framework

Performance

The framework is simply adaptive to the user’s needs and offers optimum performance. Being an HTTP-centric request/response framework, Symfony2 introduced unique HTTP and HTTP cache handling. Moreover, it increases the performance by allowing full usage of advanced features like ESI for separating different parts of a page/application.

LARAVEL

As per Wikipedia, “Laravel is a free, open-source[3] PHP web framework, 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.”

Here are some of the key advantages:

Mechanism 

With the help of an advanced query builder mechanism, Laravel helps in enforcing constraints between multiple database objects. Apart from this, it provides an easy version control system that helps with simplified management of migrations.

Auto-Load

Accompanied with an auto-loading facility, it does not need manual maintenance and inclusion paths. It also helps in generating new tools with the help of an IoC container.

Authentication 

This is one the few important parts of any web development project. With Laravel Development, authentication is much simpler as it contains the ready to use in-built authentication system. All you need is to configure database migrations, controllers, models, and views to make the system work seamlessly.

THE BOTTOM LINE OF THE COMPARISON

When finalizing your decision, keep in mind that it is never about the number of features that a particular framework provides but about the actual functionality and how the functionalities can be utilized within your own web development project. So don’t quantity befool you over quality. Choose the one that not only meets your business requirements but saves you time and cost.