Symfony vs Laravel: what’s the dif­fer­ence?

Symfony and Laravel are the most popular PHP frame­works. They are both fully developed and have been tested in the field. However, both come with their own set of ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages. We’ll explain how PHP frame­works work and whether Laravel or Symfony is the better choice for your project.

What is PHP and what are PHP frame­works?

PHP was released in the mid-1990s, and it was the first dedicated web pro­gram­ming language. The language was initially known as ‘Personal Home Page Tools’ and it made it possible to assemble a HTML document on a server in a straight­for­ward manner.

HTML documents form the basis of in­form­a­tion found online. HTML tags provide structure to the contents of a webpage. HTML becomes in­ter­est­ing when dynamic content is pro­grammed into the static structure. This is what makes PHP re­volu­tion­ary. The language can be embedded in HTML and other text documents. The static structure remains intact, while the dynamic in­form­a­tion is inserted using special PHP tags. For example, the name of a user can be displayed in the welcome message:

<h1>
    Welcome back, <?php echo $user ?>
</h1>

The demand for web ap­plic­a­tion features such as database con­nectiv­ity, user au­then­tic­a­tion, and form val­id­a­tion led to the formation of PHP web frame­works. PHP is somewhere between a pro­gram­ming library and a content man­age­ment system, which makes the layers and com­pon­ents suitable for as­sem­bling larger systems. In addition to Laravel and Symfony, there are several other fully developed PHP frame­works including:

• CakePHP, 2005
• Symfony, 2005
• Code­Igniter, 2006
• Laminas Project, formerly Zend Framework, 2006
• Yii, 2008
• Laravel, 2011

Symfony vs Laravel

The PHP web frame­works Laravel and Symfony have a lot in common. Both were developed as open-source projects and they are suitable for creating server-based web ap­plic­a­tions. Laravel and Symfony use the Model-View-Con­trol­ler (MVC) pattern to separate critical concerns. Web ap­plic­a­tion requests are processed by a con­trol­ler. The con­trol­ler manages the model’s data and presents it on the View:

• Model: data model and man­age­ment
• View: user interface
• Con­trol­ler: interface between model and view

Laravel and Symfony have been mo­nu­ment­al in the de­vel­op­ment of the PHP ecosystem. Important PHP-based tech­no­lo­gies have been developed from both frame­works, which are **** also used in other projects. Symfony is known for its modular structure of decoupled com­pon­ents. Yii and Laravel are other PHP frame­works which use Symfony com­pon­ents.

Composer offers a solid basis for package man­age­ment for PHP projects in Laravel and Symfony. In addition to the actual framework, other com­pon­ents can be installed and managed. Composer is available on all server operating systems, so you can use PHP with Composer on Ubuntu or PHP Composer in IONOS web­host­ing packages.

Now, let’s take a look at the framework versions Laravel 4+ and Symfony 2/3, which have a com­pletely different structure than that of the older versions. The following table shows the features of Laravel and Symfony in detail:

Tem­plat­ing in Laravel and Symfony

PHP’s idea of the template as a template combining static and dynamic com­pon­ents was re­volu­tion­ary. Prior to this, all HTML code had to be pro­grammed using string con­cat­en­a­tion of static parts and dy­nam­ic­ally generated values. This approach was time consuming and prone to errors as it was difficult to keep track of.

Besides embedding code in static text, the ‘Include’ command con­trib­uted sig­ni­fic­antly to PHP’s success. This command makes it possible to put together a page from several set pieces. This allows users to have con­sist­ent layouts, such as multiple pages with different content but with the same nav­ig­a­tion menu.

Tem­plat­ing involves creating HTML documents from static templates and dynamic com­pon­ents. Using PHP as a template language is not re­com­men­ded. There is not enough sep­ar­a­tion of concerns since HTML, PHP, SQL, CSS and JavaS­cript can be mixed within a PHP file. Fur­ther­more, security vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies can result from SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).

Laravel and Symfony have their own template languages to avoid any unwanted effects. These take data and render HTML. This ensures a clean sep­ar­a­tion of concerns, whereby **** the output is auto­mat­ic­ally adjusted by escaping. This prevents code injection. The generated PHP or HTML documents can be cached.

Symfony’s template language is called Twig and it allows complex document families to be created, including layouts, partials and com­pon­ents. Twig includes many useful filters and functions and relies on a simple syntax. Let’s create a list of users:

<h1>Users</h1>
<ul>
    {% for user in users %}
        <li>{{ user.name }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
</ul>

Laravel relies on its specially developed template language Blade. Unlike Twig, Blade templates may contain arbitrary PHP code. Just like in Twig, the ex­pres­sions in the double curly brackets are evaluated and the result is output. This is the same example in Blade:

<h1>Users</h1>
<ul>
    @foreach ($users as $user)
        <li>{{ $user->id }}</li>
    @endforeach
</ul>

Web ap­plic­a­tions in Laravel and Symfony

Templates are suf­fi­cient for in­form­at­ive websites which do not require func­tion­al­ity. When requested, a page is put together on the server and delivered to visitors. You already have a passable solution if you were provided with a cache layer. However, web ap­plic­a­tions require a more advanced solution.

A classic Web 2.0 web ap­plic­a­tion usually requires that users are able to log in, create and modify content. Or in other words, a database ap­plic­a­tion with essential CRUD database op­er­a­tions is needed. This should work in a mean­ing­ful way for multiple users, therefore requiring various ap­proaches to au­then­tic­a­tion, rights man­age­ment, and session man­age­ment.

PHP contains the necessary building blocks. The language provides functions to access cookies, manage sessions and much more. The con­nec­tion to a database, the execution of queries and the access to the values of the HTTP request can also be handled. However, smaller abstract low-level functions and global variables like $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE are used by default.

In the past, de­vel­op­ment teams tended to recreate the wheel with each new web ap­plic­a­tion. This led to multiple in-house de­vel­op­ments, which were neg­at­ively affected by security gaps and missing doc­u­ment­a­tion. A stand­ard­ised approach was missing, or rather a solid con­struc­tion kit con­tain­ing the necessary func­tion­ing com­pon­ents. Web de­vel­op­ment frame­works began to emerge at this point as a result.

Object-re­la­tion­al mapping (ORM) acts as an interface between object-oriented code and a re­la­tion­al database. A web app thrives on user in­ter­ac­tions and data that changes over time. Usually, the ap­plic­a­tion layer is written in an object-oriented pro­gram­ming language, while the storage layer is based on a re­la­tion­al database. Laravel and Symfony come with their own ORM im­ple­ment­a­tion.

The ORM used in Symfony is called Doctrine and it is managed as an in­de­pend­ent project. Doctrine is based on the Data Mapper pattern, and it includes several com­pon­ents. There is also a caching layer in addition to the ORM. Laravel’s ORM Eloquent follows the Active Records pattern, and it is con­sidered easier to use. Both ORMs can be connected to a variety of different database backends.

App Scaf­fold­ing in Laravel and Symfony

Laravel and Symfony have their own command-line interface (CLI) for project man­age­ment on board. The CLI can be used for app scaf­fold­ing. This is the automated con­struc­tion of project struc­tures, such as Model-View-Con­trol­ler com­pon­ents or database models.

Laravel’s CLI ‘artisan’ and Symfony’s ‘bin/console’ command contain a variety of useful commands. Logically, an existing Laravel or Symfony app is required before the CLI can be accessed. Composer is usually used for a Laravel or Symfony app in­stall­a­tion.

What are the ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of Laravel and Symfony?

Laravel and Symfony are both well-developed web frame­works. Laravel is con­sidered simpler and better suited for smaller projects. Its flat learning curve and fast results have con­trib­uted to the success of this popular PHP framework.

Symfony is famous for its decoupled com­pon­ents. These can be used together as a web framework, or in­di­vidu­ally as part of self-created software. While Laravel focuses on sim­pli­city, Symfony offers more flex­ib­il­ity. This makes the framework more suitable for complex projects with special re­quire­ments.

We have sum­mar­ised the pros and cons of Symfony and Laravel in the following table: