DEV Community

Cover image for Understanding the Difference Between Laravel and PHP: A Complete Guide
kevin kayasth
kevin kayasth

Posted on

Understanding the Difference Between Laravel and PHP: A Complete Guide

In the world of web development, PHP and Laravel are often mentioned together, but they serve different purposes. This guide will explore the history, differences, and key aspects of both PHP and Laravel, highlighting how they relate to each other in modern web development.

Sure! Here's a well-structured title along with content that you can use to explain the difference between Laravel and PHP:

Understanding the Difference Between Laravel and PHP: A Complete Guide
Introduction
In the world of web development, PHP and Laravel are often mentioned together, but they serve different purposes. This guide will explore the history, differences, and key aspects of both PHP and Laravel, highlighting how they relate to each other in modern web development.

  1. What is PHP? PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used, open-source server-side scripting language designed for web development. Initially created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993, PHP has evolved to become one of the most popular programming languages for building dynamic websites and web applications.
  • Purpose: PHP was created to enable easy integration with databases and generate dynamic web pages.

  • Major Features:

  • Supports a wide variety of databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.).

  • Works seamlessly with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

  • Ideal for server-side scripting and building content management systems (CMS) like WordPress.

Sure! Here's a well-structured title along with content that you can use to explain the difference between Laravel and PHP:

Understanding the Difference Between Laravel and PHP: A Complete Guide
Introduction
In the world of web development, PHP and Laravel are often mentioned together, but they serve different purposes. This guide will explore the history, differences, and key aspects of both PHP and Laravel, highlighting how they relate to each other in modern web development.

  1. What is PHP? PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used, open-source server-side scripting language designed for web development. Initially created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993, PHP has evolved to become one of the most popular programming languages for building dynamic websites and web applications.

Purpose: PHP was created to enable easy integration with databases and generate dynamic web pages.
Major Features:
Supports a wide variety of databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.).
Works seamlessly with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Ideal for server-side scripting and building content management systems (CMS) like WordPress.

  1. What is Laravel? Laravel is a powerful, modern PHP framework created by Taylor Otwell in 2011. It is designed to simplify common tasks in web development, such as routing, authentication, database interaction, and caching, providing a more structured and elegant approach to building applications.
  • Purpose: Laravel was built to provide developers with an easy-to-use, feature-rich framework for developing web applications with less effort and cleaner code.

Major Features:

  • Eloquent ORM: A simple and elegant way to interact with databases.
  • Artisan CLI: A command-line interface to automate repetitive tasks.
  • Middleware: A convenient way to filter HTTP requests.
  • Blade Templating: A powerful templating engine for PHP.

3. History of PHP vs. Laravel

1. PHP History:

  • Created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993, PHP has grown from a set of CGI scripts to a full-fledged programming language.
  • Its evolution from PHP 3 to PHP 7 and PHP 8 has improved performance, added object-oriented features, and introduced modern features like JIT compilation.

2. Laravel History:

  • Created by Taylor Otwell in 2011, Laravel aimed to simplify web development by offering a more structured, feature-packed solution.
  • Key milestones in Laravel's evolution include the introduction of Artisan CLI, Eloquent ORM, and Blade templating engine. Laravel 5 (2015) marked a major architectural shift, while Laravel 9 (2022) introduced long-term support (LTS) and advanced features.
👋 While you are here

Reinvent your career. Join DEV.

It takes one minute and is worth it for your career.

Get started

Top comments (0)

Billboard image

The Next Generation Developer Platform

Coherence is the first Platform-as-a-Service you can control. Unlike "black-box" platforms that are opinionated about the infra you can deploy, Coherence is powered by CNC, the open-source IaC framework, which offers limitless customization.

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Engage with a sea of insights in this enlightening article, highly esteemed within the encouraging DEV Community. Programmers of every skill level are invited to participate and enrich our shared knowledge.

A simple "thank you" can uplift someone's spirits. Express your appreciation in the comments section!

On DEV, sharing knowledge smooths our journey and strengthens our community bonds. Found this useful? A brief thank you to the author can mean a lot.

Okay