Laravel vs Lumen: If you are into web development you might be wondering which PHP framework would work best for you.
While some might choose Laravel, others would talk about Lumen. So, before we start digging the difference, let us find what they are actually about.
Developing applications is a necessity these days but there are several questions that would accompany this.
Once you have developed an idea about the application, it is important that you should use the right technology in order to develop it.
You can either go for Full Stack Web Framework or Micro Framework.
Table of Contents
Full Stack Web Framework
It comprises all the elements needed in the process of web development. From Web serving to HTML generation, everything can be done from here.
This is basically the storehouse of all the components and you can build both a feature-driven or function-specific application from this, like Laravel.
Micro Framework
These are designed for executing particular tasks or solve all types of issues. These are generally meant for smaller applications.
These are in contrast with the Full Stack Web Framework. An example of this would be Lumen.
Defining the Frameworks
Laravel
Laravel is a modern web application framework that follows the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern of architecture. With Laravel, you would get simplicity, elegance, and readability.
So if you wish to build a web application in the PHP framework then Laravel is definitely a top consideration.
- The process of debugging gets complicated with the use of multiple methods.
- It gets bloated due to the availability of multiple features. Even if the app does not need a specific file, the framework would embed it.
- Only an expert coder would be able to work with Laravel.
Lumen
Lumen, on the other hand, is a modern micro-framework that is lighter and leaner. This means that they are faster complete web application framework.
This one has a huge community compared to the other and comes with lesser configuration and varied parameters.
This one is all about speed and performance, it basically strips down the bootstrap process to the minimum. It basically glues all the packages together, including the third-party one.
- It can easily be upgraded to Laravel as it is a subset of the same.
- You can easily learn this and start using this.
- This is one of the highest performing microframeworks with a benchmark at 100 requests/second.
- This is only for small applications and primarily with Laravel.
The Difference
There are certain differences between these web development services that you should definitely know:
Framework
Laravel is basically a framework that comes with various tools and applications and supports the best web development applications. Lumen is a microframework based on microservices.
If you need to build a small application that requires high speed and less time in the market, then Lumen is indeed the best option available.
Execution
You would need to hire a Laravel developer who believes that this is the best in class web application. Lumen, on the other hand, is made by microservices.
It is lighter than the former and is dedicated to building various APIs, caching, cookie, logging and so on.
Learning Curve
Laravel has a very sleek architecture, but as Lumen is microservice-based, it is very easy to use. This means you would need time to understand the former but would be able to master the latter quite easily.
The Viewing Template Engine
View Engine basically works inside the application that is used for rendering the HTML page to either the browser or the user. It contains server controls, HTML tags along with some of the programming language.
This is one of the most talked-about differences between the two. In Laravel, for templating, Blade is used but coming to Lumen, it does not have any templating engine. However, no templating is at all used in the case of stateless API for Laravel.
Talking about Blade, it is a simple yet powerful Viewing Template Engine that is used with Laravel.
It would not restrict you from using the simple PHP code, in fact, they would compile all the Blade views into simple PHP code and then cached till they are modified.
Session Engine
Laravel basically comes with a very powerful session manager. The sessions provide a very effective way to store information about users across different requests. By default, Laravel uses a file session driver for configuration.
This would work well for multiple applications and if you consider using Memcached or Redis drivers, this would surely enhance the session performance.
Lumen, on the other hand, does not have any session manager or handler, this basically works in a stateless way.
So depending on your requirements, if you are building a stateless API, then the Session Engines would hold no importance for your work.
Routing
Coming to the routing mechanism of Laravel, it is very powerful. It would allow you to create routes for resources by creating all of the routes at once for CRUD operations. It binds the Eloquent model automatically to the value-based variables passed on the routes.
It also takes care of returning the error message in case the resources are not found. Being a developer, it would give you the ability to keep the code of the controller really very elegant.
It also has route caching which can increase the speed of routing significantly. But even when the cache is enabled, the routing mechanism for Laravel is not that fast.
Talking about Lumen it comes with the simpler and much faster third-party router. It does not support model binding automatically along with caching.
This means that you would have to give up a feature like automatic model binding in exchange for speed, which is definitely a thing to consider. Whether this is suitable or not would entirely depend on your requirements.
Form Request
These are the body of requests which are used as structures by Laravel. This holds a validation logic of it.
Initially, it was designed in order to mirror the forms of HTML, but do consider that it can be put to use for any other request.
These are the structures that can take care of the validation, thus when it fails, you would get the validation error. That is the reason why one can Uplift Business With Laravel Web Development.
Here you would also not get sanitizing engine embedded but can surely extend it with third-party libraries. This would provide sanitize features for the request along with the validation.
Lumen, on the other hand, supports Form Requests. It can, however, bind the body automatically to the form request. The sanitization and validation of data would go to the controller.
Eloquent
Even though both the frameworks support Eloquent, but the only Lumen would have the option of disabling it completely. Talking about the MVC framework, ORM can be taken as a very coupled matter.
Both of them are always accompanied together, but handling all the relationships manually can be quite a task.
For Lumen, you would always have to use Eloquent as, without this, the framework would lose most of its power.
Eloquent is basically one of the components of Laravel that was completely written from scratch as Symfony based ORM engine came up really slow.
Hire a Team of Laravel Programmers to know the more about the Eloquent ORM. It will surely help you all in the long run.
Facades
If you compare then Eloquent and Facade are quite similar. Lumen and Laravel both support this but as the previous one, only Lumen has the ability to disable this completely and in fact, this is disabled by default.
Facades are basically design pattern and you can disable the global aliases and facade classes that are given by Laravel so that one can easily access some of the modules.
But do keep in mind that the facade uses a heavy structure which can harm the overall performance.
Artisan Generators
It is a command-line tool for both frameworks. They use the same structure but Laravel has more available commands compared to Lumen.
For Laravel, you can generate any structure on the code. For Lumen, copying and pasting from the example file is the job that you would need to do.
But do remember that artisans do not affect the execution time of the request which definitely needs a mention.
Conclusion
Considering the differences that each of the frameworks bears, we cannot conclude the best of the two. Each of them has its fair share of benefits and drawbacks.
Moreover, your choice does not depend on the technology, rather it is dependent on your requirements.
So you would need to understand your needs first and based on that, you can opt for the right solutions to your needs Laravel vs Lumen.
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