All the big fishes in the pond including Wikipedia and Facebook and Pinterest are building their websites with PHP. More than 80% of such websites trust and evolve with PHP making it a preferred choice as a reliable server-side scripting language for Enterprise software application development. 

The world of PHP has several frameworks in it all longing to be better than the other, but Yii and Laravel have made it quite high in the popularity charts. The dramatic representation of the Laravel Vs Yii competition has been efficaciously captured in this google trend chart below. 

There is potent competition between Laravel and Yii for the best PHP framework for software development. But which the best or the better one and which framework enjoys an upper hand needs to be seen. Yii is considered a great option for rapid Enterprise software application development, but Laravel is considered a notch higher in terms of developing refined syntax applications.

A peek into what PHP Frameworks can give you

Before delving into both these competitive frameworks it is important to see why using PHP is certainly a good idea. 

• PHP comes with the benefit of the MVC pattern which enhances the development process. 
• The different platforms follow the DRY rule rendering a shorter code making it poignant than ever!
• In the case of PHP frameworks, there is no need to retrieve database by typing in complex queries.
• PHP also has better provisions to ensure safety
• PHP frameworks are endowed with umpteen built-in features like routing, authentication, error handlers and much more. 

While we have established our reasons to go for PHP, we recommend you to also read our choice of Top 5 PHP frameworks to get an idea about why PHP is the right solution for you. 

We do hope that by now you have a base as to why PHP frameworks are preferred. It is now essential to explore Laravel and Yii individually and then evaluate their differences.

An Overview of Laravel 

The first version of Laravel was released about 11 years ago. This open-source framework was written in PHP-7 and was initially designed as a cool alternative to Codeigniter. The main purpose of its initiation was Enterprise software application development using the Model-View-controller pattern. For complex and intricate codes, Laravel development companies recommend the use of this PHP framework passionately. 

Laravel is also considered a framework for web artisans.

Key features of Laravel

• It has enviable migration systems for databases which makes it plausible to be used in both small and large teams. 
• For RESTful web services, Laravel experts can provide robust solutions.
• It has several embedded components for authentication, session, and queue which is the biggest advantage for Laravel developers for enterprise application software. 
• Laravel also has a large community of developers and supporters. It also has several tutorials that are extremely useful to up the learning curve. 

Also read: Laravel PHP Framework – Top 10 Benefits Need to Know in 2020

Source: Google trends

From both the illustrations it is clear that Laravel among all the frameworks is outperforming regularly. It has several such features that make it a preferable choice especially for Laravel development companies.

Source: Sans Borne web solutions

Advantages of using Laravel for Enterprise software application development

Now that we have seen the top features of Laravel development, we should see how these features convert into benefits.

Laravel is blessed with a neat and an unequivocal API assisting the user to send emails on a cloud-based service rapidly. It is also easily desegregated with several web applications and is an MVC framework the separation of business code and the presentation code is already completed without the need to pool in any extra efforts. Laravel development services also imply easy authentication while the rest of the things are arranged out of the box.

An Overview of Yii

The first version of Yii was officially released in 2008 and the latest version of Yii is 2.0.15. Compared to Laravel development services, Yii is still lagging behind when it comes to overall usage. 

Source: Google trends

The official website of Yii is confident that this framework is rapid, safe and one of the best PHP frameworks for software development. Similar to Laravel, Yii has an open-source code and it was brought into being to rule out the disadvantages of the PRADO framework. 

Currently, Yii has two major versions namely 1.1 and 2.0. The former is an old generation version and is under heavy maintenance while the latter version is a refurbishment of Yii that has endeavoured to adopt the latest technologies including Composers, traits, PSR and a lot more. The second version also is the framework of today and for the current generation and is stated to do well in the future.

Key features of Yii

• Usually, Enterprise software application development requires the need to carry out redundant tasks that dwindles a lot of development time. With Yii new tools can be provided to guide the developers to allocate lesser time on monotonous and repetitive duties. It also assists in providing developers more time to revise applications. It has a highly configurable tool called Gii which is a web-based code scaffolding tool that lets you build code templates for models, controllers, and extensions instantaneously.
• For Enterprise software application development, security is a major feature that can’t be compromised. Yii is considered to provide a more secure application with its robust security application component.
• It also manages the OOP framework and takes advantage of advanced PHP features like SPL classes, binding, and other anonymous functionalities.
• It has an easy set-up and installation feature making it one of its bright features
• It uses the PHP 5 exception mechanism for the effective handling of errors.
• Yii Version 2.0 comes with the Codeception module which lets developers reduce the time to integrate the unit process. When automated tests appear, it also generates an acceptance test for our application. With this feature, it becomes easy to make applications along with testing.
  

  Advantages of using Yii

Users of Yii will confirm that it is a great framework for swift enterprise software application development because it contains code generators for CRUD operations. Like Laravel, Yii also makes use of the DRY coding rule extremely helpful for constructing a well-assembled and impressive code base. Yii also comes with built-in widgets in order to corroborate data expeditiously with the support of AJAX. 

Source: Built with Yii

The YII platform also is expandable where diminutive changes in the code can happen. It was initially designed to improvise the performance of the website and compared to laravel provides a faster loading time. It has an intuitive structure that makes it easy for Yii developers to create themes and skins. Yii also has an extensive resource base helping many developers to build better Enterprise software application development.

Laravel V/S Yii: A comparison

While discussing with developers and Laravel experts, we have come across some differences between laravel development services and Yii. Let us discover each of these differences.

ROUTING

Laravel: While working with controllers laravel experts are provided to declare each route to every action in it. This is actually weird and makes us wonder as to why the protected functions of the controller are handy and usable from its perimeters when it is given en route. Developers from around the world believe that routing should be a default function. But there is no denying that with resource routing that laravel provides, it surely is placed a notch-higher. 

Yii: In this case, unlike Laravel, declaring each route to every action is not required as simple routing is plausible. Default routing actions are possible in this case. 

CRUD GENERATION

Laravel: Laravel provides no default support. Most of the projects have an admin panel for CRUD extracted from different tables. 

Yii: This has an easy tool as discussed earlier called Gii which gives the option of prototyping swiftly by creating code fragments in addition to the entire CRUD controllers. It also provides a web-enabled liaisoning which helps users to generate the code automatically in an interactive manner. It also provides a command-line structure for developers. 

Source: Value coders

VALIDATION

Laravel: Laravel lacks any scenario-based validation in the default software package. There is no construct offered here to substantiate any model and also there is no way to depict refillable traits based on the scenario. Here everything has to be custom coded. The developers can validate as and when the requirement arises. Extension of the eloquent class also is achievable with the use of customized methods. 

Yii: Here validation is possible based on the scenario. An example of data type validation in Yii 2 is as given below:

Source: justcoded.com

DOCUMENTATION

Laravel: It has the best documentation compared to other frameworks. The documentation, though written in a generic way, offers greater understanding and is also better organised.

Yii: Its documentation is its weak point and Laravel scores higher when it comes to documentation. 

PROJECT SET-UP

Laravel: It can be installed with a composer or a PHP package manager. It also has an additional helper to speed up with the installation process with a single command-line tool. It surely has a better structure compared to Yii. A laravel development company like Chapter247 believes that this is surely a major factor to consider while choosing a rich PHP framework to work with. 

Yii: This also can be set up using a composer and while setting up a Yii project, you will get an advanced template set-up in the ecosystem. It has a different backend and frontend which can be used to develop the admin area. 

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Laravel: Despite being younger to Yii (Laravel was initiated in 2012) Laravel has a flourishing community. It ranks far ahead of Yii in terms of Github stars as is seen from the graph below.

DOCUMENTATION

Laravel: It has the best documentation compared to other frameworks. The documentation, though written in a generic way, offers greater understanding and is also better organized.

Yii: Its documentation is its weak point and Laravel scores higher when it comes to documentation. 

PROJECT SET-UP

Laravel: It can be installed with a composer or a PHP package manager. It also has an additional helper to speed up with the installation process with a single command-line tool. It surely has a better structure compared to Yii. A laravel development company like Chapter247 believes that this is surely a major factor to consider while choosing a rich PHP framework to work with. 

Yii: This also can be set up using a composer and while setting up a Yii project, you will get an advanced template set-up in the ecosystem. It has a different backend and frontend which can be used to develop the admin area. 

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Laravel: Despite being younger to Yii (Laravel was initiated in 2012) Laravel has a flourishing community. It ranks far ahead of Yii in terms of Github stars as is seen from the graph below.

Source: Peerbits

Yii: This framework also has a large community but compared to Laravel, Yii is not very active. The large community is present here too but in terms of resources and support, Laravel surely scores above. 

SCALABILITY & DURABILITY

Laravel: we are all aware that Laravel is a full-stack framework and is capable of handling literally everything. It has a command-line tool or the artisan tools which the laravel experts believe helps in creating skeleton code that takes care of everything from migration to composition. Unlike Yii, laravel doesn’t require the XML configuration making it simple to utilize. 

Yii: It is a framework based on OOP and has the best features of PHP. It also has a great configuration code that can be used to generate template codes for modules and extension in less time. 

Laravel Vs Yii – And the winner is!

Without any doubt, in terms of usage and dependability Laravel surely scores brownie points because it offers several features. For a large scale enterprise software application development, Laravel is the best choice you should go with. But if your overall goal is to build simple applications that do not require complex development, then Yii will make the cut. 

At Chapter247 you can hire laravel developers from our large PHP software development team who are well-versed with all frameworks. As a renowned Laravel development company, we have the necessary expertise and experience to work on a large enterprise-based application required to boost your productivity and increase customer engagement.