There are lots of backend frameworks available in the tech market but choosing the best one is a crucial task as it plays a vital role in web app development. Laravel and spring both are popular backend frameworks used to develop web applications, whereas Laravel is from PHP backend programming language and spring is from Java. Though both frameworks are popular in their communities, there is still confusion to choose the best one. If you are also confused, then this blog is for you. Here we’ll discuss the comparison of Spring vs Laravel on the basis of various parameters like performance metrics, scalability, testing, database etc. Before digging to the comparison, let us see the overview of Spring and Laravel.
Spring is an open-source and lightweight framework, used for developing modern Java-based enterprise applications. It provides infrastructural support which focuses on business logic at the application level. Term “Spring” refers to a set of modules or projects like Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, which is called Spring Family. Spring creates a safe environment for programming in Java. It’s modules and frameworks are optimized to deliver desired performance, streamlined development exercise, and security. You can use Spring framework to build enterprise-grade applications, complex web applications and long-running tasks, web-based and stateful applications.
Spotify, Netflix, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are some of the popular apps built with Spring.
Laravel is a an open-sourced web application framework created by Taylor Otwell in 2011. It is written in PHP and follows the model-view-controller(MVC) architectural pattern. Laravel is known for its server side routing handling, HTML authentication, templating, and more. Since it is a server-side-based framework, you can build SaaS based web apps, on-demand streaming web apps, e-learning web apps, stock trading based web management systems, multilingual CMS system, web apps with reward and recognition features, self-hosted website-performance monitoring apps.
Laracasts, Barchart, Asgard CMS, World Walking, Neighborhood Lender are some of the popular apps developed with laravel.
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Spring framework architecture supports high-end modularity with four modules:
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It follows the Model-View-Controller architectural pattern which provides the ability to divide developer roles for a comfortable development process. In simple words, where frontend developer is working on the views, a backend developer can be working on the controller logic simultaneously. MVC pattern offers a complete control over the application, which eases the selection of app-specific routes and customize how your app appears on a global scale. It improves the app’s SEO and eases the implementation of external APIs and reuse of app logic.
This framework delivers high-performing apps because of the MVC module which explains the difference between app model, view, controller to reduce the complexity among multiple app modules particularly in larger applications. The structure loads classes as features being used in the application, which eventually increases the application execution.
Also the flexibility of framework improves as developers can use set of libraries and tools. The optimized startup time and heap usage make Spring apps more user-friendly. Spring uses, fastest servers like netty and Tomcat which improves app performance.
Performance of laravel-based apps can have implications on success of project, and it is supposed to be moderate. However, its community proposes that it can be improved for better execution if properly optimized, which may allow applications to perform proficiently. Cache tags allows apps to quickly load the pre-stored information which allows faster response time, and hence improved performance.
With this framework, you can build scalable apps due to its flexibility and parallel processing capability. It enables apps to rapidly execute and reduce app downtime despite newly added features. Also the framework is highly configurable and performant.
Popular apps that uses laravel since years are scaling up their apps without any limitation. This framework inherits the scalability from PHP because of its support to rapidly growing businesses. By selecting a good database and load balancer, laravel can achieve big horizontal scaling. Laravel apps can be scaled by using MySQL, AWS and some modern caching methods.
Spring has a separate module to build microservices called Spring Boot which is different from Spring framework. It specializes in configuring external components and monitoring various components at a time. It eliminates configuration challenges associated with microservices and provides a compatible environment for microservices development.
PHP supports microservices architecture, and hence laravel supports microservices architecture too. App is divided into small building blogs, each with its function and responsibility. Those functions communicate with each other using language-agnostic APIs, and hence the app becomes compatible with microservices architecture.
To interact with database technologies like Object relational mapping and NoSQL databases spring framework offer a compatible environment. Also it extends its support for SQL databases by using JDBC connectivity. Spring Data module from Spring Family provides default implementation for repository interfaces in database integration.
There are lots of alternatives available to develop production-ready Java apps with uninterrupted database connectivity since Spring accommodates data access technologies easily.
This framework supports database system types like, MySQL, SQLite, SQL and Postgres. The fluent query builder, raw SQL, and Eloquent ORM eases the database interaction. Configuring multiple database connection is more comfortable with laravel framework. There are no limitations to create a wholly controlled relationship between database and web app.
Spring framework is popular among Java developers. It has an enormous community from entry level to experienced developers.
Laravel has more than 46K active users, 18K threads and 63.5K Github stars. Due to its vast community, maximum time taken to resolve query is not not more than three days. It’s powerful community share laravel podcasts, news, documents, repositories and so on.