Symfony alone is a general term that combines Symfony components and Symfony framework.
Symfony components is a robust php components library the same as The PHP League and Aura (more at Awesome php).
Beside Symfony components Laravel has its own set of components called "Illuminate". They are kind of coupled to the framework however a project like Torch shows how you can use them outside Laravel.
Symfony framework in the other hand is a suggestion by the same author for an architecture and code structure built on top of Symfony components.
Laravel uses some of Symfony components plus other vendor components and created its own set of components.
As I type this message Laravel and all its components uses exactly 11 unique Symfony component out of at least 40 unique external package it uses (check Laravel dependency graph).
Here's the list of unique components it uses. I made the extraction manually it's possible that I missed one or two.
Some of them are for debugging or console usage. When using Laravel you won't be directly exposed to these components as they are nicely wrapped by Laravel components and helpers.
Using any external component is not a degradation to the value of the product. Why would the author re-invent the wheel when there's already a well-tested component that serve his needs?
@Mukul Mishra
On a clean Laravel 8 installation, there's only 28 unique symfony packages being installed. The extra components are installed through external vendor Laravel uses and are not directly used by Laravel.
Regardless, how come hundreds of symfony packages being installed with Laravel while the whole Symfony components library contains only 73 packages?
Considering the list of Symfony components that Laravel really uses (listed above) do you really think that Laravel core is only built using Symfony components?
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I've first used Symfony 2 and 3 then I started using Laravel 5 (now it's version 8). I've never looked back since.
@gary Bell
Symfony alone is a general term that combines Symfony components and Symfony framework.
Symfony components is a robust php components library the same as The PHP League and Aura (more at Awesome php).
Beside Symfony components Laravel has its own set of components called "Illuminate". They are kind of coupled to the framework however a project like Torch shows how you can use them outside Laravel.
Symfony framework in the other hand is a suggestion by the same author for an architecture and code structure built on top of Symfony components.
Laravel uses some of Symfony components plus other vendor components and created its own set of components.
As I type this message Laravel and all its components uses exactly 11 unique Symfony component out of at least 40 unique external package it uses (check Laravel dependency graph).
Here's the list of unique components it uses. I made the extraction manually it's possible that I missed one or two.
Some of them are for debugging or console usage. When using Laravel you won't be directly exposed to these components as they are nicely wrapped by Laravel components and helpers.
Using any external component is not a degradation to the value of the product. Why would the author re-invent the wheel when there's already a well-tested component that serve his needs?
@Mukul Mishra
On a clean Laravel 8 installation, there's only 28 unique symfony packages being installed. The extra components are installed through external vendor Laravel uses and are not directly used by Laravel.
Regardless, how come hundreds of symfony packages being installed with Laravel while the whole Symfony components library contains only 73 packages?
Considering the list of Symfony components that Laravel really uses (listed above) do you really think that Laravel core is only built using Symfony components?