Core PHP vs Laravel: The Ideal Choice for your Web Apps

Table of Contents

Introduction

The two most preferred backend technologies that have recently gained traction within the web application development marketplace are Laravel and PHP. Both these allow for exceptional results and help streamline the development process. According to the latest data available from data from W3Tech, approx. 78% of websites use PHP language. However, the times are changing, and thus the need to assess Core PHP vs Laravel on various paradigms arises. So, without further delay, let us proceed with our topic.

Core PHP vs Laravel: Overview

Core PHP is the pure PHP language used to build dynamic web pages, whereas, Laravel is a simple web framework that helps create extensible PHP-based websites and web applications at scale. However, our experience with both Core PHP and Laravel seems utterly different from each other. Now, before we move ahead with sharing our experience choosing between Core PHP vs Laravel, let us first brush up on our understanding of both Laravel vs Core PHP:

What is Core PHP?

PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is a scripting language that enables you to automate various tasks on server-side web development. PHP is the foundation programming language for all PHP frameworks, including Laravel. It is a general-purpose programming language that embeds the HTML code and allows for creating dynamic web pages, eCommerce web apps, and even database-driven applications. The main reason to use the PHP language while crafting your web application is that it doesn’t require any external components and libraries, which aids in reducing the code and helps complete the development process within the time constraints.

Features of Core PHP

• Simplicity
• Extensibility
• Platform Independence
• Flexibility
• Server-Side Scripting
• Database Compatibility
• Object Oriented Programming
• Interoperability
• Performance
• Community Support

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP-based web development framework that helps build web application backends. We often come across the question, Why use Laravel? Well! The answer is that it spots an elegant and expressive syntax that makes development a creative and fulfilling experience. Easing out the inherent web development tasks such as routing, caching, sessions, authentication, and HTML templating. Laravel helps make the development process easy without hampering the application functionality. It also possesses several tools such as expressive migration systems, inverted control containers, integrated unit testing, and many others to help you boost up the development process. Laravel is mainly suited for developing SPAs, eCommerce portals, web portals with extensive data, and social media platforms.

Features of Laravel

• MVC Architecture
• Routing System
• Blade Templating
• Eloquent ORM
• Authentication and Authorization
• Artisan CLI
• Database Migrations and Seeding
• Caching
• Queues and Job Scheduling
• Testing Support

Core PHP vs Laravel Comparison Table

Core PHP is a general-purpose scripting language for backend development, whereas Laravel is a full-featured PHP framework. Similarly, there are a few other differences between Laravel vs Core PHP that though similar, make one different. However, before we discuss them in detail, let us first briefly assess the two backend technologies on various parameters.

Core PHP vs Laravel In-Depth Comparison

When comparing the two backend tech stacks, Laravel vs Core PHP, the two best web development sources, make your projects worthwhile for your end-users. However, now that we have covered the circumferential difference let us proceed with the detailed comparison between Core PHP and Laravel.

Performance

Performance is the most significant segment when finalizing a technical stack for your next project. The better the performance, the more efficiently it evaluates the request handling attribute. Considering, Laravel vs PHP Performance, generally, Core PHP is faster when compared to Laravel because of its concurrency rate, which helps execute and deliver acknowledgment to an extensive amount of user requests simultaneously.

According to the performance benchmarks tests by open-source communities, PHP has touched a benchmark score of processing 1617 instructions simultaneously, whereas, Laravel, on the other hand, is behind PHP. The Core PHP concurrency is also faster as it can handle up to 9000 commands per second and render about 90,000 lines of code within a minute. However, even if the performance of Laravel is slower, its cache tags characteristic can minimize the response time by loading the pre-stored data.

Architecture

The architecture of a technical stack plays a crucial role in delivering the best for your web application. While creating a business solution is directly proportional to your web application’s speed and data security. Considering Laravel vs Core PHP, Core PHP offers features such as extracting the logic layer from the representation layer that helps businesses easily configure the data routes for impeccably receiving and processing the data inputs by the users.

However, Laravel uses an MVC architecture that helps developers to precisely divide the frontend and the backend of their web application, resulting in better efficiency as the interface designers and the backend developers all can work simultaneously and complete the project in record time. Also, the MVC architecture helps improve the websites’ search engine ranking, offering better control to customize as per the marketing strategies.

Stay ahead of the curve and ensure your web apps are ready for the future
Hire Laravel Developers from Bacancy to utilize the latest technologies and best practices for building scalable and sustainable applications.

Database Compatibility

Databases are essential to enhancing the efficiency of your application. They assist in storing, organizing, and processing the data per user request of your web application. Currently, Laravel supports four of the most renowned databases: SQL, SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, allowing for multiple connections between the web application and different databases and guaranteeing a seamless communication path.

However, considering Core PHP, it can be easily linked with any database, whether it is DB2, MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, or any other such database. Additionally, it is easy to switch from one database to another in Core PHP with its incorporated modules and functions. Also, it helps the product owners to migrate the user data through menial coding through the API reusability, prepared statement support, OOPS-based syntax, and exception handling. Additionally, due to its PHP data objects, a constant relationship is built between the web application and the database, thereby promising a smooth data transaction channel.

Scalability

The flexibility of your tech stack to integrate with new technologies for extending the functionality of enterprise solutions is always the best choice. Both the backends, whether Core PHP or Laravel, are the ones with active and extensive communities therefore, they are continuously upgraded with the latest components leading to embedding the Cloud Infrastructure with the application and offering the option to scale up the resources anytime based on the growing business needs.

However, Core PHP offers an add-on feature of autoloader and opcode cache that helps execute multiple user requests within seconds. Also, it doesn’t compile the code with every user request, which contributes to enhancing the speed of your web application by saving the scripts in shared storage.

Security

The security data is stored within the database, and the transmission channel is the vital duty of the organization as a minor data breach can lead to heavy losses in terms of money as well as market credibility. Comparing Core PHP vs Laravel based on the parameter of delivering data integrity and confidentiality, Laravel offers more security due to its well-established or extensive structure.

However, when it comes to Core PHP, to curb the cyber-threats and unauthorized access to Core PHP-based applications, the developers must adjoin the third-party APIs and define their protocols. Laravel offers an inbuilt security system for mitigating SQL injection and cross-site request forgery attacks. Also, by default, the access control and authentication systems can cross-verify the user identity and offer the only legitimate user access to the resources.

Flexibility

Core PHP allows you to implement additional ideas beyond the set structures of frameworks. It offers new features and efficiency to your project therefore, it is also known as the custom-based framework. In simple words, we can say that Core PHP is a flexible framework given the customization opportunity it delivers as required by the project.

Whereas, Laravel, on the other hand, utilizes the MVC architecture that performs well with projects having a significant amount of unstructured code. This simplifies the coding structures and simplifies the workflow subsequently. This allows for exceptional performance and further support in this framework.

Ease of Development

While working with Core PHP, the product owners often are not bound by the use of any library, meaning no constructive hustle will arise within the development process of your web application using this framework.

Laravel possesses many object-oriented libraries optimized to offer a clear module structure that simplifies the modification later required within the project and imparts smooth maintenance. Laravel has the upper hand over Core PHP in Development Ease because it offers Code Reusability even though Core PHP possesses a faster development process.

Speed

PHP scripts allow for faster execution when codes are written clearly and concisely. Furthermore, the Core PHP scripts can be reused by web developers in similar projects, increasing the task speed next to the list.

As we know, Laravel Follows a layered architecture which makes the execution of code slower. Although this proves to be a strong point for Laravel, it offers extensive debugging tools to help the product owner build viable code with minor critical errors compared to Core PHP.

Thus, we can see that Laravel offers fast development and performance. Though Core PHP can work faster, it needs the code structure to be very well-written, and we can infer that both Core PHP and Laravel can work almost equally efficient when it comes to Laravel vs Core PHP speed.

Similarities Between Core PHP vs Laravel

Despite several differences between Core PHP and Laravel, Laravel being a byproduct of Core PHP, is sure to have many similarities to Core PHP. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the grounds on which both Laravel and Core PHP stand together.

PHP Foundation

Whether it is Laravel or Core PHP, both these are built on top of the PHP programming language and, thus, allow for the PHP language functionalities and the syntax they follow.

MVC Architecture

Both follow the MVC or the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern, which helps organize the code and separate the concerns, streamlining the development.

Server-Side Rendering

Both enable server-side rendering meaning the web server processes the requests and generates the HTML responses to be sent back to the client’s browser.

Database Support

Laravel and Core PHP both offer support for various databases, that include MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and others. Also, both of them offer data abstraction layers and query builders to make easy database interactions.

Templating

Both frameworks offer a templating system to separate the presentation layer and the business logic. Core PHP utilizes a PHP’s inbuilt templating engine, whereas Laravel uses the Blade templating engine, adding additional features like template inheritance and control structures.

Capabilities of Core PHP and Laravel

Regarding using cases or utility, both Laravel and Core PHP are used by various enterprises across industry verticals with various applications. To better understand this metric given, below are a few use cases below:

Core PHP Utilities

Cybersecurity: The PHP development helps you introduce robust cybersecurity protocols to your web application that help prevent and diffuse cyber attacks. As the PHP code forms the base of your web application, developers can quickly identify the attacks and take necessary precautions.

Custom Notifications: Core PHP presents a miniaturized dependency on third-party email features. Using the PHP codes, it is easy for a web application to send notifications to clients. These notifications can be used as sales tools because they can carry important messages about new products and services.

CMS Systems: Content Management Systems or CMS have become one of the essential elements for almost all businesses. The Core PHP enables simplified ease of adding and updating your content and aligning it with your target audience.

Laravel Utilities

MVC Architecture: The Modular architecture of Core PHP is effective for its needs. However, Laravel’s MVC architecture allows for out-of-the-box support for performance capabilities. The MVC architecture can help simplify the coding structure and workflows if an enormous data set is involved.

Custom Applications: Laravel allows for the development of a wide range of custom web applications that are flexible to the requirements of both large and small enterprises and their target customers. The custom web applications built with Laravel are fast, effective, and with the add-on, benefit the front-end developers in delivering an efficient output using its blade template engine.

Eloquent ORM: The Laravel model allows for enhancing the business application performance that can further be enhanced. Laravel is the only PHP framework that provides easy construction and customization of models using the Eloquent ORM. It helps maintain the proper flow of interactions with the application database objects and simple syntax.

Application Testing: Laravel offers a set of features that helps unit and feature testing on your web applications via the PHPUnit. Unit testing is ideal for handling smaller code segments, whereas feature tests are ideal for more extensive tests.

What is the Difference Between Core PHP and PHP Frameworks?

Talking about Core PHP, also known as the pure PHP language, is used for creating dynamic web pages; however, using Core PHP doesn’t offer the option to the product owners to work with the external libraries, nor do they have the reusability factor nor the remains of an already developed web application. This infers that the product owners must write their code every time from scratch.

However, when using the PHP frameworks such as Laravel for creating web applications, the product owners still use the same traditional PHP language for building their web applications. The PHP framework allows access to a handful of libraries and functionalities, meaning that many repetitive tasks are more comfortably done in PHP frameworks as there are things already in place to let you do them all with a few lines of code. Also, the PHP frameworks are more standardized, making it easier to debug and saving development time and cost therefore, for every external developer you bring on board, it is easy to understand the project’s status.

How to Shift from Core PHP to Laravel 10?

Several reasons complement Laravel and tell you Why to shift from Core PHP to Laravel latest version. Some of these can be stated as enhanced productivity and efficiency, code organization and maintainability, active community and ecosystem, enhanced security, and the option for extensive scalability and performance. However, when you decide to shift from Core PHP to Laravel 10, you can follow the below given step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Install Laravel

Install Laravel’s latest version (Laravel 10) on your local development environment. Use Composer, a PHP package manager, to install Laravel globally by running the below-given command in your terminal:

Step 2: Create a Laravel Project

After the installation process is complete, create a new Laravel project by using the below-given command:

This will create a new Laravel project with the given name in a folder named ‘project-name’.

Step 3: Review Core PHP Code

Analyze your existing Core PHP codebase and identify the components, functionalities, and database structure that must be migrated to Laravel. Make sure that you make a note of any custom libraries, functions, or dependencies used in your Core PHP project.

Step 4: Create Laravel Routes

Define the URL routes for your application in the routes/web.php file. Map each route to the appropriate controller method or closure function.

Step 5: Create Controllers

Create controllers to handle the logic for each route or functionality. Generate controllers using the Laravel CLI command:

This will create a new controller file named MyController.php in the app/Http/Controllers directory. Modify the generated file to implement your desired functionality.

Step 6: Migrate Database Schema

Create migration files for each table or modification required in your existing database schema. Run the migration command given below to migrate the database structure:

Step 7: Adapt Database Queries

Refactor your existing Core PHP database queries to use Laravel’s query builder or Eloquent ORM. Rewrite your queries to use Laravel’s database query syntax and methods. Convert any raw SQL queries to their Laravel equivalents.

Step 8: Migrate Views

Move your existing Core PHP views to the resources/views directory in your Laravel project. Refactor the views to use Laravel’s Blade templating engine, which provides powerful features such as template inheritance, control structures, and variable rendering.

Step 9: Refactor Business Logic

Identify the business logic within your Core PHP project and refactor it into Laravel’s controllers, models, or custom classes. Encapsulate your logic within appropriate Laravel components to follow the MVC pattern.

Step 10: Integrate Authentication

Laravel provides a built-in authentication system. If your Core PHP project has authentication functionality, integrate Laravel’s authentication features by running the following command:

This command will generate the necessary routes, views, and controllers for authentication.

Step 11: Adapt Custom Libraries or Dependencies

If your Core PHP project relies on custom libraries or external dependencies, determine how to integrate or replace them in your Laravel project. Utilize Composer to manage your project’s dependencies and ensure they are correctly installed.

Step 12: Test and Debug

Thoroughly test your Laravel application to ensure the migrated functionality works as expected. Write unit tests using PHPUnit to verify the correctness of your code. Debug any issues or errors that arise during the testing phase.

Step 13: Deploy to Production

Once your Laravel v10 application has been thoroughly tested and validated, deploy it to your production environment. Set up the necessary server configurations, ensure the required dependencies are installed, and configure your web server (e.g., Apache or Nginx) to serve the Laravel application.

Congratulations! You have successfully migrated your web application from Core PHP to Laravel 10.

To better understand your migration process, refer to the Laravel documentation (laravel.com/docs) on specific Laravel latest version features, commands, and best practices and bring out the best in your migrated web application.

Still, if you are confused about your Laravel migration process, you can Outsource Laravel Development, and the experts will help you quickly get through your Laravel Migration process.

Benefits of Migrating from Core PHP to Laravel for Businesses

Both Core PHP and Laravel are widely used for web app development. PHP ranks amongst the most widely used web development languages; however, Laravel still stands out as the top PHP framework.

As the times change, markets evolve; the same is valid with Core PHP and Laravel. With the tremendous evolution of Laravel, Core PHP lags under various heads. This leads to businesses inclining towards migrating from Core PHP to Laravel. Below given are a few benefits Why migrating from Core PHP to Laravel is beneficial for your business:

Security over Everything

Since the online marketplace has taken over, the way of doing business worldwide post-COVID-19 has changed. Online security has become essential; business owners have generously accepted this factor. Though application development has taken the next step to scalability, online threats and cyber-attacks persist within the market.

Laravel is the most apt framework for the security of your application; the title of the undisputed champion here lies with Laravel due to its secure architecture that thwarts any malware, security threat, or any other vulnerability to accessing your application. With this, you can rest assured that the SQL injection will not affect your application using this framework.

Increased Efficiency and Performance

Core PHP is a traditional tech stack with limited scope for features and efficiency. Laravel, on the other hand, allows you to create high-performing applications even when there is a limited scope of performance for specific features and functionalities. This allows Laravel to deliver enhanced efficiency for your web applications compared to Core PHP. Therefore, migrating from Core PHP to Laravel is an excellent choice for business owners when it comes to performance and efficiency.

The add-on feature of Laravel that further contributes to its efficiency is its efficacy in creating web applications with the help of tools such as Memcached and Redis in the framework, which increase performance and efficiency.

Impactful Authentication

Laravel is famous everywhere for its developer-friendly web development technology that helps build next-gen applications with better functionality and faster performance. It also makes authentication simple for developers and simplifies designing logic for granting access to people.

Extensive Community and Documentation

Another reason to use Laravel is that it is open-source and backed by a vast community of developers. However, there are ample frameworks available that contribute to its various aspects. But, Laravel possesses an active community of developers who are readily striving to find ways to make Laravel more efficient and flexible. Laravel is backed by effective and efficient documentation that allows developers to enable developers to contribute and explore its development efficiency at their best actively.

Separate Business Logic and Interface Environment

Laravel boasts the MVC architecture that automatically allows for separate logic and expression syntax. This allows the front-end developers to enhance the UI without hampering the development of the core functionalities. This feature allows your developers to allow you to fix bugs quickly with minimal time investment. Also, it offers faster development of add-on features and processing of feature add requests, easy and efficiency debugging at any stage of development, and thwarts any future conflict between the server-side and the client-side development

Seamless Data Migration

The most significant benefit of Laravel for businesses is database migration. It simplifies the migration process for developers and enables you to reverse database modifications. Your developers can easily exchange the datasets, making the collaboration more convenient, smooth, and straightforward. It offers Laravel developers everything they need to simplify the development process and promote collaboration. The next-gen combination of Migration and Maintenance allows your developers easy and faster database maintenance without the hassle of recreating them, saving a lot of time and effort.

Simplified Unit Testing

Unit Testing is a crucial part of the web application development process. It ensures that your application is complete and none of its components are deconstructed. It also ensures that your application is free from bugs and has no room for exceptions. The Laravel application for businesses must ensure that it has secured such elements if it has to go online.

Familiarity with Artisanal Aspects

Laravel is almost identical to an Artisan tool which is one of the biggest strengths of Laravel that assists the developer in developing and receiving a significant portion of help in reducing and trimming repetitive and dreary chores. Also, it needs little or no manual labor to complete a simple task even in the future, as the Artisan will take care of it.

Object-Oriented Libraries

The Laravel framework has object-oriented libraries pre-installed. These libraries involve a robust authentication framework that is simple and easy to use and implement for programmers. The framework is practically organized into modules that enable the developers to create more responsive, modular, and ready-to-use programs for your business application that help benefit it in the long run.

Feature for Multilinguality

Familiarity with a particular language is insufficient, primarily if you aim for a global approach. Laravel comes out as the most viable option and the most compelling choice. It resolves the development issues related to the multilingual approach giving you a firm ground for a global approach. It also lets your web application translate into multiple languages quickly and swiftly. It also allows you to use multilingual URLs for your web application and introduce effective SEO practices and promotions in different regions.

Future Ready Applications

Any business owner aims to deliver next-gen features and functionalities to end users. The Laravel framework allows your developers to deliver these functionalities and build high-performing, immersive web app development experiences that match the ever-evolving market trends.

Conclusion