Taylor Otwell in 2011 created Laravel as an open source PHP framework for web application development. Since its initial release, Laravel from just a framework has now grown into the whole as an ecosystem. This PHP framework is taking the development community by storm with the applications that are fast, yet simple to create. Laravel helps the developers to build and sustain high-quality web applications without bothering much. Laravel offers a variety of useful tools, and it’s fair to know the specific names so that the ecosystem is not hard to explore. And the mindset to use relatively obscure names makes the Laravel ecosystem complicated. This article bestows a glimpse at the tools of Laravel ecosystem and what they explicitly are known as and for.

Laravel

Framework | Inbuilt | Free

Apparently as explained above, Laravel is an open source PHP Framework. Quickly unarguably it’s today’s highly preferred framework in the web development sphere. Laravel has an excellent industrial ceiling. With Laravel minor things can be performed quickly, high-level functionality is also instantly available.

Eloquent

ORM | Inbuilt | Free

Eloquent is the Object Relational Mapper or ORM in Laravel. It is quite powerful and provides an elegant and easy Active Record implementation to work with your database. Every database table has its “Model” that interacts with the table. Irrelevant to any database type, it facilitates consistent interface.

Artisan

Command Line | Inbuilt | Free

The CLI or Command Line Interface of Laravel called Artisan drives a lot of functionality. Majorly it manages migrations and some boilerplate generation. It also works as a REPL, that directly in the CL enables one to test functionality such as Eloquent calls.

Blade

Template | Built-in | Free

Laravel’s templating engine is called Blade and serves as a cross between the syntax of Twig and .NET’s Razor template. The templates of Blade are easy to form and nestable. This benefits the developers as they can simply create small yet expressive templates.

Homestead

Development Tool | Install| Free

Laravel rightly requires to work locally, but sometimes it is complicated to manage a local server with the right setup, config, database access, etc. Here, Homestead comes to the rescue and acts as the Virtual Machine. It is an entire OS specifically, Ubuntu. It creates Unix standard command line tools and an active server environment for everyone. Windows users who are prone to typically face more friction, gets benefits of Homestead.

Valet

Development Tool | Install | Free

Valet the alternative for Homestead, is available exclusively for Mac OS. As stated above, Homestead presents an overall development environment; Valet presents a scant minimum to work. With Valet you can share sites over the web. It supposes, as an outcome, that your local machine is suitably fitted, set up, and configured. Considering homestead, it is better for larger and more complex projects.

Elixir

Front End Build | Inbuilt  | Free

Elixir facilitates the process of handling front-end elements, like JavaScript or Sass files. Elixir provides automated compilation, minification, and more these sorts of resources.

Cashier

Payment Handling | Package | Free

A package called Cashier facilitate online payments. Typically integrated with Stripe or Braintree, it handles subscriptions, coupons, discounts, and an enormous number of different features. Further, it is easy to set up.

Forge

Deployment | Subscription | $15/month

Digital Ocean, Linode, and AWS currently are known to provide the best utility and money value for hosting services. Despite the popularity, the purchasing, configuring, providing, and deploying to these services can be limited than streamlined. Forge offers a tool that enables these accounts to be created with the administration. It also supports Github, Bitbucket, or whatever to be connected directly to the Laravel environment.

Conclusion

That’s was a quick glance at some of the add-ons and components that are popular in the Laravel ecosystem. Hopefully, that clears a few unclear things. Planning for agile app development, then you are on the right page, ViitorCloud provides dedicated hire developer services for Laravel framework.