Laravel PHP Framework

Laravel is a free and open-source PHP web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax, designed to make common web development tasks easy and enjoyable. Created by Taylor Otwell in 2011 as an alternative to CodeIgniter (which lacked built-in authentication and authorization), Laravel has become the most popular PHP framework, used by over 750,000 developers worldwide. Key features: Eloquent ORM: a beautiful, simple ActiveRecord implementation for working with databases. Each model maps to a database table, with relationships (hasMany, belongsTo, hasOne, belongsToMany, morphTo) defined as methods. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server. Artisan CLI: a command-line interface with over 100 built-in commands for common tasks (make:model, make:controller, migrate, seed, serve, tinker). Custom commands can be created. Migrations: version-controlled database schema management. Migrations are PHP classes that describe table creation and modifications, enabling team collaboration and deployment automation. Blade templating: a lightweight but powerful template engine with template inheritance, sections, components, control structures (@if, @foreach, @while), and custom directives. Blade compiles to cached PHP files for performance. Routing: expressive routing with closure or controller-based handlers, route parameters, middleware, route groups, and resource controllers. RESTful resource routing. Authentication: Laravel Breeze, Jetstream, and Fortify provide scaffolding for login, registration, password reset, email verification, two-factor authentication, and API tokens (Laravel Sanctum/Passport). Queue system: background job processing via Redis, Amazon SQS, database, or Beanstalkd, with delayed jobs, job batching, and rate limiting. Events and listeners. Mail, notifications, and broadcasting. Testing: PHPUnit and Pest integration. PHP. MIT.