What is Laravel?

Laravel is a free, open source PHP web application framework, designed for the development of model–view–controller (MVC) web applications.

Features:

• Laravel uses Composer as a dependency manager to add framework-agnostic and Laravel-specific PHP packages available from the Packagist repository.
• Eloquent ORM (object-relational mapping) is an advanced PHP implementation of the active record pattern, providing at the same time internal methods for enforcing constraints to the relationships between database objects. 
• Application logic is part of developed applications, either by using controllers, or as part of route declarations. 
• Reverse routing defines a relationship between links and routes, making it possible for later changes to routes to be automatically propagated into relevant links. When links are created by using names of existing routes, appropriate uniform resource identifiers (URIs) are automatically created by Laravel.
• Restful controllers provide an optional way for separating the logic behind serving HTTP GET and POST requests.
• Class auto loading provides automated loading of PHP classes, without the need for manual maintenance of inclusion paths. On-demand loading prevents loading of unnecessary components; only the components which are actually used are loaded.
• View composers are logical code units that can be executed when a view is loaded.
• IoC container makes it possible for new objects to be generated by following the inversion of control principle, with optional instantiating and referencing of new objects as singletons.
• Migrations provide a version control system for database schemas, making it possible to associate changes in the application's code base and required changes in the database layout, easing deployment and updating of applications.
• Unit testing plays an important role in Laravel, which itself contains numerous unit tests that detect and prevent regressions in the framework. Unit tests can be run through the artisan command-line utility.
• Automatic pagination simplifies the task of implementing pagination, replacing the usual manual implementation approaches with automated methods integrated into Laravel.