Laravel vs Node.js – Which one to choose?

Are you looking for a place to start developing? Or perhaps you’ve just built a few sites in PHP and want to see what’s out there. It can be intimidating, especially when developers talk about “frameworks.” The frameworks pull together the libraries, tools, and language features used to build great applications. And two of the most popular frameworks available today are Laravel and Node.js. In this article, we’ll talk about Laravel vs Node.js and list their major differences to help you make an informed decision based on your requirements.

What Is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP web framework. Taylor Otwell developed Laravel with the intention of developing web applications that follow the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern.

Laravel follows the best practices of software development “out of the box,” providing a variety of common functionalities to help you build robust applications, including authentication, routing, sessions, caching, and more.

The Laravel framework was designed for people who want to get things done but don’t want to spend time wrestling with complex frameworks that are too rigid to adapt as requirements change. Laravel was built from the ground up with only two goals: simplicity and elegance.

Simplicity gives you freedom from some of the common pitfalls that may plague other frameworks and architectures.

But freedom comes at a price. Simple things can sometimes be harder than they need to be. That’s where elegance comes into play. Laravel uses minimal code for an application, so your focus is on building features, not writing boilerplate code. That’s why every top-rated backend development company in India prefers Laravel.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime used to build server-side and networking applications. It is designed to run on the V8 JavaScript engine, which is part of Google Chrome. Node.js can build fast and scalable network applications using JavaScript on both the client and server sides.

Node.js provides an event-driven architecture that simplifies the development of real-time web applications. It uses an event loop and non-blocking I/O to handle multiple requests simultaneously, making it ideal for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Node.js can be used to build web servers (for example, PayPal uses Node to power its website). It can also be used to build any other kind of network application, including mobile and desktop applications.

History of Laravel

The Laravel framework is a free, open-source PHP web application framework. Taylor Otwell created it in 2011.

Laravel was first released in 2011 under an MIT license and is hosted on Github. Since then, it has steadily risen in popularity and currently ranks as one of the most popular frameworks (if not THE most popular) for building web applications.

The framework is live on over 700,000 websites and has been downloaded more than 144 million times since its release.

History of Node.js

Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl in 2009 and was originally conceived as a way to write a web server without using the DOM or browser APIs. The first release had support only for Linux and Mac OS X.

It became a popular backend development solution for top web development company due to its scalability and performance when handling thousands of concurrent connections and its ability to run from within the command line interface (CLI). Since then, it has grown into a mature technology and has become the most popular framework for building fast and scalable network applications.

According to various statistics, websites worldwide will use Node.js between 1.4% and 2.2% in 2022. Node.js powers at least 30 million websites worldwide.

Key Features of Laravel

1. MVC Architecture

   Laravel follows Model-View-Controller architecture where the model represents data, the view represents output, and the controller represents logic between the model and view. Each component can be easily extended with minimum coding effort using traits, interfaces, or class inheritance.

2. Authentication

   Laravel provides simple, expressive ways to configure authentication from both a user and an application perspective. You can use Laravel’s built-in authentication service providers or create custom ones that suit your needs.

3. Innovative Template Engine

   Laravel provides an innovative templating engine called Blade, which makes creating dynamic templates easy. The templates are compiled into simple PHP code that can then be run on the server for better performance. With this feature, you can create extremely powerful views that can be reused across different areas of your application.

4. Eloquent ORM

   Eloquent ORM is an object-relational mapper that provides a simple ActiveRecord implementation to work with your database tables. Developers of web applications can now write database queries using PHP syntax rather than SQL code with the feature. Comparatively speaking, ORM is faster than earlier PHP frameworks.

5. Security

   The Laravel framework gives developers access to powerful and advanced web application security features. The hashed and salted password mechanisms used by Laravel’s security features successfully prevent plain-text password storage in user databases.

   You can also use the “Bcrypt Hashing Algorithm” to generate an encrypted password. Additionally, the SQL statements used by Laravel help prevent SQL injection attacks.

Key Features of Node.js

1. Asynchronous Model

   In the asynchronous model, the program does not wait for a particular operation to complete before proceeding to the next step. This allows many operations to be processed concurrently and efficiently using system resources.

2. Based on Javascript

   The Node.js library uses JavaScript, another crucial feature from the engineer’s point of view. The majority of developers are already comfortable using JavaScript. As a result, working with Node.js will be much simpler for a designer comfortable with JavaScript.

3. Single Threaded

   Because all I/O operations are non-blocking in Node.js, only a single thread is needed to handle incoming requests (assuming you’re not doing CPU-intensive work). Because there’s no need for multiple threads and associated overhead on each request being handled by your application, this makes Node extremely fast.

4. Event-Driven Architecture

   In this architecture, events can trigger callback functions as they occur. Events such as incoming requests or outgoing responses are handled asynchronously by JavaScript code running in a web browser or server environment. Node’s event loop handles these events and executes associated code in response (e.g., reading data from a client connection).

5. Cross-Platform Compatibility

   Node.js is available for all major operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and mobile devices. This makes sharing code between different environments easy without having to rewrite it each time you move to another OS platform. So if that’s a priority to you, hire MERN stack developers with a deep knowledge of Node.js.

Pros and Cons of Laravel

Pros of Using Laravel

• Laravel is very easy to use. It has many features that can help developers build web applications faster than other frameworks.
• The documentation is really good, so you can learn a lot while developing your application.
• It provides an expressive syntax for defining routes, controllers, models and much more.
• The community is huge, so if you have any questions or problems, you will find an answer on StackOverflow or one of the many sites where Laravel users gather together.
• High-quality authentication and authorization options.

Cons of Using Laravel

• Laravel offers fewer features than other frameworks, though, and falls into the category of lightweight software.
• It is expensive compared to other frameworks. Free versions are available but don’t include all the features needed by larger companies or teams with more complex projects.
• Laravel has consistent updates, which is both good and bad. The good thing is that they fix bugs and security issues in less time. However, the update process itself may break your application, and you will have to spend time fixing it up again.

Pros and Cons of Node.js

Pros of Using Node.js

• Node.js is open source, so you can use it free of charge on any platform you want: Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
• It can be used to build large websites that handle thousands of concurrent connections and small applications that use only a few CPU seconds or less per request.
• Node is highly scalable because of its event-driven architecture.
• If you know JavaScript, you can use Node. There are also many resources online that can help you get started with Node.
• It’s fast because it runs on Google’s V8 engine, also used by Google Chrome.

Cons of Using Node.js

• The asynchronous nature of Node.js makes it difficult to deal with callbacks clearly, and this often leads to code that’s hard to read and maintain. It leads to something called callback hell.
• The Node.js API frequently changes due to its open-source nature and active community of developers leading to unstable API.
• Numerous NPM registries and libraries are of low quality, inadequate, and lack proper documentation. Therefore, it is challenging to monitor this insufficient development if some amateurs create a Node.js web application.
• There aren’t enough expert Node.JS developers to meet market demands as the demand is increasing exponentially quicker than anticipated.

Popular Platforms Created Using Laravel

Some of the popular platforms created using Laravel include:

1. Alison

   A wide variety of diploma, certificate, and upskilling courses are available through Alison, a pioneer in online education. It has a global learner and trainer community of more than 20 million people spread over 195 countries.

   As a result, this website’s mission is to deliver free education everywhere. You can see the website’s seamlessness as you browse it. And it’s all because of the Laravel framework!

2. Barcharts

   According to Bloomberg, Barchart offers websites with stable financial data solutions. It is also the world’s top platform for researching stocks, currencies, and cryptocurrencies, mostly for the US, UK, and Canadian markets.

   The website contains a vast array of tools connected to one platform. Because Laravel makes the entire process simpler, complicated configurations are not required. Additionally, it offers user-friendly interactive streaming charts.

3. InvoiceNinja

   InvoiceNinja is an open-source invoicing programme for companies and independent contractors. In other words, it enables them to create invoices, handle payments, monitor spending, and other things.

   Users using the SaaS model can employ either their own infrastructure or the public cloud. The website’s Laravel framework allows for adding additional users and configuring their permission levels inside a single profile.

Popular Platforms Created Using Node.js

Some of the popular platforms created using Node.js include:

1. LinkedIn

   LinkedIn’s backend stack consists of Node.js as the primary runtime environment for its mobile apps and web APIs. The company also uses Node.js for its main website, which supports over 690 million users.

2. Netflix

   To enhance the user experience, Netflix has been working to speed up interface loading. It employed a Java backend until 2015, which was good for data administration but had long user wait times.

   Netflix chose to switch to Node.js to take advantage of the performance advantages of Node.js because Javascript’s front end and Java’s back end could not interact effectively.

3. PayPal

   The same JAVA to Javascript transition issues that affected Netflix also affected PayPal, which 87.5% of online shoppers use to make digital payments. This led to slower loading times and problems with payment processing.

   The developers were proficient in Java, but because the front end was written in JavaScript, there were several issues with the development. As a remedy, PayPal decided in 2013 to switch from Java to Node.js, becoming one of the first businesses to do so.

4. GoDaddy

   Another major firm supporting node.js is GoDaddy, one of the world’s largest hosting and domain name providers. The modification was made by GoDaddy when they revamped their website in 2016. Reduced server strain caused by the Website Builder platform, lower expenses, and improved user experience were the top concerns.

Laravel vs Node.js: Comparison Table

Despite their apparent differences, Laravel and Node have several noticeable commonalities. Let’s talk about the similarities between these programming marvels before we get into the major point of differences.

Open-source: Laravel and Node.js are open-source platforms that have widespread developers’ adoption.

Full-stack: Node and Laravel both offer full-stack development. Laravel uses PHP for the back end and JavaScript for the front end. Both the client and the backend of Node use JavaScript.

Solidity: Numerous software developers worldwide support and use Laravel and Node. And these two languages are used to create a sizable number of software programmes. Due to their reliability and durability, these two remain at the forefront of all online technologies.

Now, let’s understand how Laravel and Node.js are different from each other.

When to Choose Laravel?

Here are some use cases where you should consider using Laravel:

1. Building an app supporting microservices architecture.
2. Building enterprise-level applications
3. Building a CRM or content-oriented platforms with many database tables for backend database management.
4. Building scalable products.
5. Building high-level security apps.
6. Creating pre-built apps using templates.

When to Choose (use cases) Node.js?

Here are some use cases where you should consider using Node.js:

1. Creating real-time applications as it processes data quickly, so users get a quick response.
2. Creating data-intensive applications such as Netflix, PayPal, etc.
3. Creating real-time web applications.
4. Creating chatbots
5. Useful for web scraping and automation
6. Building rest APIs

How SolGuruz can help with Laravel and Node.js Development?

SolGuruz is a best web development company in India to provide expert Node.js developers and Laravel developers. We act as your web development partner to provide you with a team of experts who work together to bring your ideas into reality.

FAQs on Laravel Vs Node.Js