Laravel vs. SpringBoot
Laravel and Spring Boot are popular frameworks used for web application development. Laravel is based on PHP whereas Spring Boot is based on Java. Let us look at the key differences between the two and which one is better under which circumstances.
1. Performance and Speed Comparison
Following is the performance and speed comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- PHP Version: Historically, PHP is much slower than Java. Different versions of PHP have different performance metrics. The use of the latest versions of PHP, like PHP 9 and above, with advanced features, functionalities, and improvisations provides great performance.
- Caching: Various caching mechanisms can be applied to your Laravel application to improve its performance.
- Autoloaded Services: Laravel comes with a lot of autoloaded services to improve the programming experience, but at the same time, it increases overhead. Reducing these services to the only important ones improves performance by a great deal.
Spring Boot
- Java Speed: Spring Boot is built on Java, which has a fast execution speed, and it can be further optimised with the JVM.
- MVC Model: The MVC architecture of Spring Boot differentiates between the app’s model, view, and controller, thus reducing complexity and increasing speed and performance metrics.
- Asynchronous Processing: Using asynchronous programming, multiple tasks can be executed concurrently. This feature of Java can be used by Spring Boot applications to improve performance.
2. Application Architecture
Following is the application architecture comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, where the application is divided into three components: model, view, and controller.
- Eloquent ORM: It simplifies database interaction. Eloquent simplifies database operations by allowing developers to work with database records as objects and providing features like relationships, query builders, and migrations.
- Blade Templating Engine: Laravel’s templating engine provides easy ways to create dynamic views. You can embed PHP code within your HTML while maintaining clean and readable syntax.
Spring Boot
- Core Container: It provides the fundamental functionality and includes dependency injection, the Bean module, the Expression Language module, and more.
- Data Integration: It provides support for integrating with databases and other data sources. It includes Spring JDBC, Spring ORM, Spring Data, and Spring Transaction.
- Web: The Web area provides support for building web applications, including the Spring MVC and Spring WebFlux modules.
3. Scalability
Following is the scalability comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- Horizontal and Vertical Scaling: Horizontal scaling involves adding more servers to your application, and vertical scaling involves adding more power to your server.
- Queue System: Laravel’s in-built queue system offers the feature of deferring a lengthy task during peak traffic hours.
- Load Balancing: In cases where a single server is incapable of handling multiple requests, a load balancer distributes the traffic across multiple servers. This reduces the load on all the servers in the application.
Spring Boot
- Horizontal and Vertical Scaling: Vertical scaling is suitable for applications with a limited number of users or transactions. Horizontal scaling is suitable for applications with a large number of users or transactions. It distributes the workload across multiple servers.
- Caching: Caching is storing frequently accessed data in memory. Thus reducing the number of requests to the database or external services.
- Asynchronous Processing: Using asynchronous programming, multiple tasks can be executed concurrently. This feature of Java can be used by Spring Boot applications to improve the execution of many tasks.
4. Testing
Following is the testing comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- PHPUnit: PHPUnit allows you to easily test your code. It supports various types of tests, including unit tests, integration tests, and functional tests.
- Feature Test: It evaluates the functionality of larger components or features in the application.
- Browser Test: It simulates user interactions with the application to test front-end behaviour and user experience.
Spring Boot
- Unit Test: Unit testing involves testing individual units or components of the application isolated from other components. In Spring Boot, you can use JUnit or any other testing framework to write unit tests for your application.
- Integration Test: Integration testing involves verifying the end-to-end behaviour of a system.
- Automated Testing: Spring Boot supports automated testing giving developers the power to check if their code is working by writing scripts and without manual intervention.
5. Microservices Compatibility
Following is the microservices compatibility comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- Lumen: Lumen is a fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax.
- Features: It provides features like routing, middleware, and dependency injection.
- RESTful APIs: Laravel can be used to develop RESTful APIs. It is easy to define API endpoints and handle HTTP requests due to Laravel’s routing system, controllers, and resourceful routing.
Spring Boot
- Spring Cloud: Spring Cloud is a lightweight event-driven microservices framework to quickly build applications that can connect to external systems.
- Loosely coupled applications: It leverages the power of microservices, allowing developers to create loosely coupled applications that can be independently developed, deployed, and scaled.
- Cloud Platforms: Compatible with various cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform.
6. Database Support
Following is the database support comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- Eloquent ORM: It simplifies database interaction. Eloquent simplifies database operations by allowing developers to work with database records as objects and providing features like relationships, query builders, and migrations.
- Relational Database Support: Laravel supports a wide range of relational databases, like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, and MariaDB.
- Migrations: Laravel’s migration system allows developers to define database schema changes using PHP code rather than SQL scripts.
Spring Boot
- Spring Data: Spring Boot integrates with Spring Data, providing a high-level abstraction for working with relational databases in Java applications.
- Relational Database Support: Spring Boot supports a wide range of relational databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and H2.
- NoSQL Database Support: Spring Boot also supports NoSQL databases like MongoDB.
7. Community
Following is the community comparison for Laravel and Spring Boot.
Laravel
- Large Community: Laravel has a big community of developers, designers and enthusiasts.
- User-Friendly Documentation: The official documentation for Laravel is easy to understand, even for beginners.
- Community Contributions: There are lots of extra features and improvements for Laravel made by the community, which keep the framework up-to-date and better.
SpringBoot
- Diverse Spring Boot Community: Spring Boot has a big community of engineers, architects, and companies.
- Thorough Documentation: Its documentation is detailed and regularly updated.
- Community-Created Tools and Features: Developers can find many extra tools and features made by the community on platforms like GitHub.
Laravel vs Spring Boot: Top Differences
Laravel and Spring Boot are the two most popular tools used to develop applications. A comparison between the two can be seen as a scenario where you need to build a house. You can either use all the tools that will help build the house with wood or tools that will help build the house with metal. The wood tools are easy to use, and building a house using wood is easier, but it is not as strong as compared to a house built using more sturdy materials like metal.
Laravel can be seen as a wooden tool that makes development easy but not that strong. Spring Boot can be viewed as the tools used to make the house using metal, which is stronger. Both of them can build your application, but it’s the use case that helps choose between the two. In this article, we will discuss the differences between Laravel and Spring Boot.
To improve your career prospects as an IT professional, Check Out: JAVA Backend Development – Live.
The course covers advanced Java, Spring/Spring Boot, Hibernate, RESTful APIs, Micro-services
Contact Us