PHP MVC framework is very common for developing custom solutions with PHP. There are a lot of PHP MVC frameworks available on the web. CodeIgniter and Laravel seem to be the most popular among them. Sometimes, PHP developers can be confused as to which framework to use. Which one is better between Laravel and Codeigniter on the basis of what they offer and their advantages and disadvantages?
Let us study a brief analysis and know the differences between Laravel and Codeigniter to make an informed decision.
Laravel:
Laravel is an open-source PHP web application framework based on MVC architecture. The syntax patterns of Laravel are elegant and expressive.
Due to Laravel, tasks like routing, authentication and sessions have become easier and simpler which are enjoyed by a Laravel developer.
Laravel is designed keeping in mind the latest version of PHP. Thus, base development contents like unit testing support and authentication are inbuilt.
Laravel has simple ORM or Object Relational Mapping due to which developers find it easy to organize the application’s database.
Laravel has object oriented libraries and makes use of libraries and models much easier. One area where Codeigniter lags behind Laravel is exceptions. These, with exceedingly detailed stacktrace aren’t available for developers who use Codeigniter. Routing can be odd sometimes in Laravel.
Codeigniter:
Codeigniter is simple to use and easy to set-up. You can download the preferred version of Codeigniter from its homepage and unzip the contents.
Codeigniter is considered to be the best in terms of documentation as it is well structured and very clear and stable. There are minimal chances of any problem or bug going unnoticed in Codeigniter.
It is very easy for developers using Codeigniter to seek support as this framework has a very big community which uses this framework for all sorts of projects.
Codeigniter has an inbuilt engine which is easy to use and offers output caching. Web pages can be cached to reduce the loading time. Besides, efficiency and performance can be enhanced.
Codeigniter was released at the time of PHP 4 after which a lot of features were added to PHP. Hence, there was the necessity for extending code files to make this framework work.
One of the drawback of Codeigniter is that it does not offer default modular separation.
On the basis of above points, we can say that both Laravel and Codeigniter are unique and have their own sets of advantages and disadvantages. It is upon the developer to decide which framework to use on the basis of the requirements. For a developer working on Modern Apps, it is suggested to go for Laravel due to its ease of web development.