Laravel vs Symfony: Which PHP framework is better to use?

If you are a PHP developer then you are well about laravel and symfony. Both of these frameworks are good for the development. However, the professionals get into perplexing situation of choosing one framework. Here we will discuss about the laravel vs symfony.

Talking about their difference, Laravel is good for great performance, fast development and high speed. On the other hand, Symfony is good for the development of large and complex applications.

Laravel vs Symfony

What is Laravel?

Laravel is defined as open-source framework that adopt model-view-controller design pattern. It creates a web application. However, it reuses the existing components of multiple frameworks.

There are also basic features of PHP frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Yii. Laravel is easy for those who carry a good knowledge of Advanced PHP and core PHP.

It is developed in qualified MVC framework and it is built using the Symfony framework component. It is suitable for all kinds of enterprises. There are also some built in features like session, routing, and authentication.

Some Statistics about Laravel:

  • There are about 1,36, 900+ websites which are based on the PHP laravel framework
  • There are about 100,173 unique domains in Laravel
  • The USA is the most usable region of Laravel

Pros of Laravel:

  • This framework is simple to use also the user documentation is simple in language.
  • There is a good abstraction process in Laravel. It abstracts all unneeded operations and put them in the queue. It results in a fast user response time.
  • Laravel avoids any illogical architectural pattern. It develops the Model View Controller pattern.

Cons of Laravel:

  • Applications built in Laravel might be heavy for the fast loading
  • The latest update of Laravel i.e. new version can break the code.

What is Symfony?

This framework is based on open-source PHP projects like Twig, PHPUnit, and Swift Mailer. Now Symfony has grown up in the form of a mature framework. The main purpose of Symfony is in complex enterprise projects.

Some Statistics about Symfony:

  • There are about 7,802 unique domains in Symfony
  • About 11,654 websites use Symfony

Pros of Symfony:

  • Symfony’s community is big in the market. Many developers use Symfony.
  • Good platforms like Magento and Drupal use this platform.
  • Symfony updates itself to the latest version as per the developer’s needs.

Cons of Symfony:

  • Symfony relies on other technologies so some apps could load slowly.
  • It is hard to learn Symfony as compared to other PHP frameworks.
  • It requires more time for testing due to the need to prebuilt code for multiple uses. Due to this, the development process is slow.

Laravel vs Symfony: Which PHP framework is better to use?

Forms & Validators:

Symfony uses a validator component for validating objects against certain rules. You can either use ‘form validation’ or ‘manual validation’ with the PHP Laravel framework. Symfony needs to build a completely new validator whereas PHP Laravel supports with After Validation Hook.

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Database Support and Migration:

Symfony PHP uses Doctrine for ORM handling whereas Eloquent in Laravel handles ORM. The PHP Laravel migration is manual but it never expects you to define the fields in the model.

Middleware:

Both of the frameworks are middleware supportable. The PHP Symfony relies on the observer pattern but PHP Laravel Framework uses a decorator pattern.

Speed:

PHP Symfony maintains and handles the speed of the application using multiple approaches. The PHP Laravel framework mainly guarantees appropriate version control features. There is no special feature in Laravel to maintain the speed.

Template:

The template engine of Laravel is Blade and that of Symfony is Twig. The Blade allows the PHP Laravel developers to use the same code multiple times and this give fast development. Twig need to redefine the functions multiple times.

Performance:

Any Laravel website takes about 60 milliseconds as the average loading speed. On the other hand, the Symfony website takes 250 milliseconds. The reason behind this difference is the cache. PHP Laravel Caches only views, but the PHP Symfony site caches the views.

Modularity and Scaling:

Symfony and PHP Laravel are developed on the MVC architecture. However, Symfony wins over Laravel in terms of code modularity.

Laravel vs Symfony: Tabular Form

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How to Install Laravel and Symfony?

Laravel:

Composer is the straightforward method of installing Laravel. First step is to download Laravel.

Composer Global require “Laravel/installer”

Laravel new blog

Composer create-project –prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

Symfony:

# Downloading Symfony installer

Sudo curl -LsS https: //symphony.com/installer –o /usr/local/bin/symphony

# Granting permissions to execute installer

Sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/symphony

#creating new Symfony project

Symfony new symfony_project

#launching built –in server

Cd symfony_project/ && php bin/console server:start

Laravel vs Symfony: Who wins?

Laravel is perfect for the project when developing the application quickly. Some of the great advantage of Laravel is magic method. It helps in avoiding the complicated and long codes. Choosing Laravel or Symfony is all depends on the PHP development project scope and size. The PHP Symfony can be the better choice when it is about long term complex project.