framework

Laravel is a PHP web application framework that provides a structured, expressive way to build websites and web applications. The problem it addresses is that building a web application from scratch in PHP requires solving the same foundational problems over and over: handling incoming requests and routing them to the right code, connecting to a database, managing user authentication, sending emails, processing background jobs, caching data, and many more. Laravel provides pre-built, well-tested solutions to all of these common concerns, so a developer can focus on the unique features of their application rather than reinventing infrastructure.

The framework works by giving every request a clearly defined path through the application. An incoming HTTP request is received, routed to a controller function based on its URL and method, that function talks to the database through an object-relational mapper called Eloquent (which lets you work with database records as PHP objects rather than writing raw SQL), the result is rendered to an HTML response using the Blade templating engine, and the response is sent back to the browser. Beyond this core cycle, Laravel includes a database migration system for tracking and applying schema changes as version-controlled code, a queue system for running slow tasks like sending emails in the background, and a powerful built-in tool for writing command-line scripts.

This particular repository contains the core framework code that the laravel/laravel starter application package depends on. If you want to start a new Laravel project, you would use the starter template, not this repository directly.

You would choose Laravel when building a PHP-based web application of any size — from a simple content site to a large multi-tenant SaaS product — where you want a full-featured framework with extensive documentation, a large community, and a rich ecosystem of first-party packages.