My Take on Laravel v/s NodeJS

Presently there are a plethora of frameworks available to choose from in the market and the number of options increases once you combine them. In the following post, I would like to offer my take by comparing two most popular frameworks, i.e. Laravel and NodeJS. Both the frameworks, in my opinion, are one of the most advanced web frameworks available across the globe. And that’s why I prefer not to compare the two as though one is better than other, rather compare them against which is the best tool set for the job or problem you are trying to solve.

Now before we jump on the differences, let’s take a look at certain similarities between the two frameworks, i.e.

Node.JS and Laravel

Package manager

• NPM for Node.JS
• Composer for Laravel

Routing

• Express.js for Node.js (or others)
• Laravel has its own routing

RESTful Routing

• Sails.js for Node.js (or many others)
• Built-in to Laravel

Templating

• You can choose from a large number of templating engines for Node.js, many of which have client-side implementations as well
• Laravel uses Blade templates, but there is also support for Twig

Non-blocking / event based

• This is inherent in Node.js
• Reactphp for Laravel

Web Sockets

• Socket.io for Node.js
• Ratchet for Laravel

ORM

• Waterline, Node ORM2, and Sequelize
• Eloquent for Laravel (or Doctrine or others)

Database drivers: MongoDB, MySQL, etc

They are both very comparable; just search for a driver for the database of your choice

Namespacing

• Support by using object literals in Node.js (also see the JavaScript pattern)
• Inherent follows PSR-0 (PHP support since PHP 5.3)

Dependency injection

• Inherent in Node.js by using "module"
• Inherent in Laravel by using the IoC container

Data typing

They both use dynamic weak-typed languages (some disagree), meaning variables can change type at runtime and the language will infer a variable's type, i.e. adding the string "2" and the integer 2 will result in an integer 4.

Interfaces

• Non-existent in Node.js, but some have tried; the pattern typically used in JavaScript is duck-typing, which, in essence, says you don't need interfaces
• Inherent in PHP and also highly encouraged by the Laravel community

Helpers

• Basically, anything in npm can be installed as a helper in Node.js (for example, see Underscore.js)
• Basically, anything in composer can be installed as a helper in Laravel. But one needs to see that a number of helpers are already provided

SWOT Analysis

Check out this quick Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of each framework for better perception.

Node.js

Strengths/ advantages

• Offers vibrant and engaging community
• Changing fast, so you can be influenced
• Modular from its beginning
• Non-blocking/ very fast
• ability to share code between client and server (since it's JavaScript)
• JavaScript a very common language, especially on the web
• the community tends to be biased in support of non-relational databases such as MongoDB

Weakness/disadvantages

• Not good with computation heavy apps
• Not as mature as expected in comparison to others
• Event-based programming can sometimes become really difficult to work with: debugging, promises, etc. To do things well, it takes a lot of training/experience

Opportunities

• Maturity: Due to high community involvement, it simply needs time
• Ability to develop comprehensive frameworks: This means you don’t have to build your own framework right from the scratch.

Threats

I personally see no threats in NodeJS. Perhaps, it is always advisable to get in touch with a prominent NodeJS development company that offers best possible services especially when it comes to front end development.

Laravel

Strengths/ advantages

• Laravel has CodeIgniter combined, I further wish it had from PHP 5.3 for best software practices. 
• With MVC and PSR-0, every line of code has an expected place
• There is a large community available in PHP that advocates unit tests, and PHP supports interfaces; two things that help ensure consistency in your application.
• It provides patterns due to which one can use current best practices in programming: dependency injection, facades, unit tests, interfaces, PSR-0
• PHP has a large and well-established community
• The community turn out to be a bit biased in support of MySQL like relational databases

Weakness/ disadvantages

• Not inherently non-blocking
• PHP has enormous baggage from PHP4 and earlier: just look up anything about "PHP is the worst language ever"
• Unfortunately, there isn't a large community around Laravel. Besides, the community isn't striving hard for support/acceptance

Opportunities

• With a very active community of PHP and PSR-0, it becomes very easy for Laravel to adapt and adopt from the large pool of PHP code, i.e. out-of-box support of nonblocking, multi-threading, etc
• Laravel itself being a beautiful framework makes it easy to push adoption, especially among the CodeIgniter and CakePHP crowds.

Threats

When it comes to Laravel, everything turns out to be a threat because it is written in PHP. Well, that doesn’t mean PHP framework is going anywhere anytime soon.

End Notes

NodeJS and Laravel, both are brilliant frameworks to work with and they both hold enormous promise for the future. But I personally feel that NodeJS is more favorable than any other alternative.