http://www.phparch.com \ November 2018 \ 13Maintaining Laravel ApplicationsLumen takes a backseat to Laravel in
issue resolution, new features, and
releases.
The main reason developers reached
for Lumen was speed. The early bench-
marks boasted blazing fast speed over
other frameworks like Symfony and
even Laravel. However, the landscape
has changed. With each new version,
Laravel becomes faster and faster. This
is mostly due to underlying perfor-
mance gains in PHP itself. While
Lumen remains faster than Laravel, the
gap is not so large.
To the point of maintainability,
Lumen will die. When it does, you will
be left with a legacy application. There
is a Lumen to Laravel Shift you can
reach for when the time comes. Until-
then, as your Lumen application grows,8 Laravel Analyzer:
https://phpa.me/opinionated-laravel-way
9 Laravel Shift:
https://laravelshift.com10 BaseCode:
https://basecodefieldguide.com
so does the likelihood you will need to
enable or include a feature of Laravel.
When you do, you’ll feel the pain of
running a bare-bones version of Lara-
vel and those performance gains will go
out the window.
For new applications, use Laravel.
Even if it’s “just an API,” use Laravel.
For existing Lumen applications, next
time you need a feature which Laravel
offers, take the opportunity to convert.Start Shifting
I hope this advice helps you create not
only maintainable applications, but also
ones which leverage the many features
offered by Laravel. If you’d like to see if
you application is following the advice
outlined in this article, you can run the
Laravel Analyzer^8. It is currently free.
Don’t hesitate to tweet me with any
questions or challenges. I welcome any
and all feedback towards crafting better
Laravel applications.Jason McCreary, aka “JMac”, is a software engineer
specializing in PHP & iOS application development. Creator
of Laravel Shift^9 and author of BaseCode^10. JMac has a passion
for programming and the great outdoors. Never hesitate to talk
to him about either. @gonedarkRelated Reading
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Your Code by Bryce Embry. May 2018.
https://phparch.com/magazine/2018-2/may/ - Artisanal: Project Creation by Joe Ferguson. May 2017.
https://phparch.com/magazine/2017-2/may/ - Building Laravel Shift by Jason McCreary. May 2016.
https://phparch.com/magazine/2016-2/may/
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