Laravel Vs. CakePHP; Finding the Right Choice for your Next Product Development Project

Are you hiring a PHP developer?

Or building software with PHP?

Questions that you might come across…

Is CakePHP better than Laravel? Is Laravel better than CakePHP? The tug of war between Laravel developers and CakePHP developers is never-ending between PHP enthusiasts. 

However, as a business owner, it is prudent to ignore the fanatics and focus on the RoI of the frameworks.

Did You Know? Around 6,50,000 websites use Laravel, whereas, around 1,20,000 use CakePHP. 

The popularity of these two frameworks depends upon the ease of functionality and these programming languages provide their works; Laravel and CakePHP are the most among all other PHP frameworks. 

Developers can choose between the two frameworks depending upon their project requirements, familiarity with frameworks, and much more. 

This blog post provides a detailed comparison between these two frameworks that help developers choose the best framework for their projects. 

What is Laravel?

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that assists in developing web applications. This also offers graphic command-line interfaces, faster web development tools, and an extensive library with reusable components and similar features. 

Since less code is required for building applications based on Laravel, these applications are easy-to-maintain codebases and highly scalable. Here are some of the features of Laravel that would help you better understand the same;

• Modularity- It has 20 libraries containing essential features and provides it based on the applications’ built-in perspective.
• Configuration Management- This has to run in different environments and thus helps implement configuration management in several ways.
• Security- Laravel consists of other features such as register, forgot password, and three further layers for authentication.
• Testing- Containing inbuilt features to test different scenarios, this framework helps maintain and enhance development by using inbuilt features to test other scenario codes. 

What is CakePHP?

Built on the MVC architecture, CakePHP is an open-source framework used majorly to build web apps in a more accessible manner.

This framework leverages the modern manner, i.e., JSON format, to store the database.

Here are some features of CakePHP which would help you understand the framework better;

• User-friendly Framework- You can develop complex websites quickly with this user-friendly framework. Also, you can adjust your website according to modern frameworks.
• Better Performance- CakePHP is an outstanding framework for developing web apps with excellent performance.
• Testing- It is difficult to fix bugs in business websites. CakePHP enables a selection of errors in web applications and business websites, which makes things easier when you create complex applications. 

Critical Comparison between Laravel and CakePHP

Now that we have understood the essential introduction to both Laravel and CakePHP and their features. It’s time to move ahead toward the critical comparisons between these two frameworks;

1. Usage

Laravel and CakePHP are primarily open source frameworks, with the only difference being-Laravel is free to use & operate, whereas CakePHP is paid and requires a license.

Hence, due to this property, Laravel attracts more developers because of its free-to-use features compared to CakePHP. 

2. Architecture

Based on MVC architecture, the model-view-controller consists of three major parts: the model, view, and controller. The model consists of application data, the idea helps display the data to users, and the controller interacts with a model to present you with data queries.

CakePHP uses the Hierarchical-Model-View-Controller (HMVC) architecture. In this architecture, different components have separate MVC that interact to update the applications. 

Owing to the architecture, Laravel is ideal for enterprise solutions, whereas CakePHP is best suited for small websites. 

3. Templates

The template Laravel is Blade, whereas, in CakePHP, regular PHP files with ctp extensions with alternative PHP syntax control the output and structures. 

A templating engine is used to design unique layouts. These templates have the logic to prepare the data the controller is rendering into an organized presentation ready to be presented to the user.

This does not affect the MVC structure, whereas CakePHP affects the HMVC structure.

4. Object-relational Mapping

To retrieve data, Eloquent ORM is used by both of these platforms. In Laravel, we get two ORM options: query builder and Eloquent ORM. In this case, CakePHP has an advantage that doesn’t create any issue in the object-relational mapping.

5. Security

CakePHP offers advanced security features such as hashing, encryption, and decryption. 

Laravel provides basic features such as password reminders, reset protection, password validation, and much more.

Hence, CakePHP offers better security than Laravel. 

Laravel Vs. CakePHP- A Quick Comparison Table

Below is a short comparison table between Laravel Vs. CakePHP:

So, which is better, Laravel or CakePHP?

Laravel and CakePHP both have their advantages as well as disadvantages. While Laravel allows the developers to work in a more organized manner, with CakePHP, the developers need not build the applications from scratch.

Laravel uses several features to build robust web applications, and by using the same, developers can immediately develop the applications. 

So, the entire decision is based on the developers, their requirements, and the project timeline.

If you are facing any issues regarding starting product development or selecting the right platform for your following software, Netsmartz is the right place for you. Netsmartz can help you build your teams on your terms, from ideation to product development!

So without wasting more time, book a free consultation today.