Laravel vs other PHP frameworks - Hands-On Comparison

Comparing Laravel with Other PHP Frameworks

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Laravel project to understand how Laravel differs from other PHP frameworks like CodeIgniter and Symfony. You will create a basic data structure listing features of Laravel and other frameworks, then filter and display Laravel-specific features.

🎯 Goal: Build a Laravel controller that holds a list of PHP frameworks with their features, filter Laravel features, and display them in a view.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array of PHP frameworks with their features in the controller

Add a variable to hold the name 'Laravel' for filtering

Use a loop or collection method to filter features for Laravel

Return a view that displays Laravel features

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Developers often compare frameworks to choose the best one for their project. This project helps understand how to organize and filter data in Laravel to support such comparisons.

💼 Career

Knowing how to manage data and views in Laravel is essential for backend web development roles using this popular PHP framework.

1

Create the frameworks data array

In the Laravel controller, create a public property called frameworks that is an array with these exact entries: 'Laravel' => ['MVC', 'Eloquent ORM', 'Blade Templating'], 'CodeIgniter' => ['Lightweight', 'Simple Routing', 'No ORM'], and 'Symfony' => ['Bundles', 'Twig Templating', 'Doctrine ORM'].

Laravel

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class FrameworkController extends Controller
{
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Define a public property $frameworks as an array with the exact keys and values given.

2

Add a variable for the Laravel key

Inside the FrameworkController class, add a public string property called selectedFramework and set it to 'Laravel'.

Laravel

 ['MVC', 'Eloquent ORM', 'Blade Templating'],
        'CodeIgniter' => ['Lightweight', 'Simple Routing', 'No ORM'],
        'Symfony' => ['Bundles', 'Twig Templating', 'Doctrine ORM'],
    ];

    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Add a public string property $selectedFramework and assign it the value 'Laravel'.

3

Filter features for Laravel

Add a public method called getSelectedFeatures() that returns the features array for the framework stored in $selectedFramework by accessing $this->frameworks[$this->selectedFramework].

Laravel

 ['MVC', 'Eloquent ORM', 'Blade Templating'],
        'CodeIgniter' => ['Lightweight', 'Simple Routing', 'No ORM'],
        'Symfony' => ['Bundles', 'Twig Templating', 'Doctrine ORM'],
    ];

    public string $selectedFramework = 'Laravel';

    // Add getSelectedFeatures method here
}

Need a hint?

Create a method that returns the features for the framework stored in $selectedFramework.

4

Return a view displaying Laravel features

Add a public method called show() that returns the view 'frameworks.show' passing a variable 'features' with the value from $this->getSelectedFeatures().

Laravel

 ['MVC', 'Eloquent ORM', 'Blade Templating'],
        'CodeIgniter' => ['Lightweight', 'Simple Routing', 'No ORM'],
        'Symfony' => ['Bundles', 'Twig Templating', 'Doctrine ORM'],
    ];

    public string $selectedFramework = 'Laravel';

    public function getSelectedFeatures(): array
    {
        return $this->frameworks[$this->selectedFramework];
    }

    // Add show method here
}

Need a hint?

Create a method show() that returns the view frameworks.show with the Laravel features.