What is the Difference between Symfony & Laravel?
People overestimate the availability of many options to achieve an outcome, but many-a-times, it can get overwhelming to choose one way to go with. Similarly, when it comes to building websites, the availability of many frameworks, having their own different USPs, makes it difficult to decide the one that would go with the requirements of the website.
For the sake of this topic, we will exclusively talk about Symfony and Laravel. The need to compare both of them arises because of so many similarities among them in the first place. Firstly, they are both coded in PHP, they both support scaffolding, full-text search, and multilingual content.
So what are the features that make them different from each other? Let’s look at all the parameters based on which both of them stand out in their own ways:-
- Popularity
- It wouldn’t be fair to compare the frameworks based on popularity, but as a reality check, Laravel is the most popular PHP framework, which makes it a good choice to hire a Laravel Developer, as you’re more likely to bump into one. Symfony isn’t that far behind either, being the second most popular PHP framework.
- Information Assistance
- The training and support information available online for Laravel is way more extensive than Symfony. Laravel has a tutorial base called Laracasts, which provides very detailed knowledge, whereas Symfony doesn’t have a tutorial base. Symfony still has information available online, but then it isn’t as thorough as that of Laravel.
- Scaling and Modularity
- We have to give this one to Symfony as it provides reusable components, which further offers better modularity. Even though both of these frameworks utilize the MVC architecture, Symfony is more useful when it comes to large scale and complex projects because of its codes being organized in a much cleaner way.
- Templates
- Laravel and Symfony ship with their own template engines called Blade and Twig, respectively. The only way Blade stands out is by allowing code reusability, and Laravel comes with a sub-framework called Lumen, for building APIs and microservices.
- Database Support
- ORM or Object Relational Mapping makes it possible to access and manipulate objects, regardless of how those objects relate to their data sources. Doctrine handles ORM in Symfony and Eloquent in Laravel. When it comes to comparing both of them, there isn’t a clear victory in either of the hands.
- Authentication
- Disregarded as insignificant, a Web Development project deems Authentication to be one of the most important functions. Laravel allows authentication to be much simpler as it contains an in-built, ready-to-use Authentication system. Symfony, on the other hand, has a Custom Authentication System, which isn’t as refined and Simplified as Laravel.
Bottom line is, if we really go into the details, there could be many micro features based on which your opinion could change in favour of either of the frameworks. What really matters is the functionality of the frameworks and practical convenience when it comes to Web Development. The fact that you made it till the end of this article, kinda indicates your inclination towards Web Development. In case you’re looking for upscaling your online business, you may hire a Web Developer and have yourself an aesthetically appealing website.
