You are probably a web developer or a developing web application if you haven’t yet heard of Laravel. One of the most popular PHP frameworks, Laravel, boasts amazing user-friendliness but has quite a punch to it with powerful features that let you develop any kind of application without burdensomeness. It simplifies the development process of any small personal project or a high-end business application due to well-planned architecture and the vast tools ecosystem.
This article will explore Laravel in-depth and examine some amazing open-source Laravel projects. These projects are interesting examples of what’s possible with Laravel and represent fully functional applications that you might find useful for your own projects or contribute to. From music streaming services to invoicing tools, the incredible array of impressive applications that Laravel powers suggests its versatility and flexibility.
What Is Laravel?
Coming close to the open-source projects, let’s come closer to what makes Laravel special. Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that helps developers code modern web applications efficiently and quickly. From the year 2011 onwards, Laravel started gaining popularity and attraction due to the simplicity and elegance of its syntax. It mainly focuses on the fun development of development for developers and leveraging powerful tools to ensure web applications are robust, secure, and scalable.
Some standout features that make developers love working with Laravel:
- MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, which helps organize your code and separate logic from presentation.
- Blade Templating: The Laravel Blade template engine is lightweight. It can utilize simple, readable syntax for writing views.
- Eloquent ORM: This is one ORM system that simplifies work with the database. Instead of using SQL queries, you’ll be able to use PHP syntax to interact with your database.
- Artisan CLI: Laravel provides a command-line interface called Artisan. It helps users automate common tasks, such as running database migrations. Moreover, it can automatically generate boilerplate code.
- Security: The company claims to take security very seriously. It has several features that give hackers the run-around, including features such as hashed passwords, protection against cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
Top Open-Source Laravel Projects Everyone Loves
1. Koel
Koel is a personal music streaming service built on top of Laravel and Vue.js. Do you get tired of mainstream services like Spotify or Apple Music? Do you want a service that’ll let you stream your private collection? Then you’re in luck. Koel is self-hosted, so you can manage your music no matter where you are in this world.
Features:
- Supports popular audio formats like MP3 and OGG
- Streaming of audio in real-time with the use of WebSockets
- Responsive design for all mobile phones to have a seamless experience
- Cloud storage integration, including Google Drive
- Audio streaming from other remote locations
- Simple and user-friendly interface
2. BookStack
BookStack is an open-source documentation platform built to simplify information organization and storage. Designed with Laravel, it gives teams or individuals simple functionalities for their knowledge bases or wikis. Whether you are handling your company’s internal documentation or preparing a personal knowledge repository, BookStack offers an easy solution.
Features
- Easy creating and managing of documentation using an intuitive WYSIWYG editor
- Your posts, books, chapters, and pages are arranged in a manner that can be easily navigated.
- There is full markdown support for the content so that the user can bring out his creative expression in a highly stylized format
- User permission management can be done with role-based access control.
- Slack integrations with notifications and LDAP for user management
3. Flarum
Flarum is one of the next-generation forum software applications where it stands out thanks to modern design coupled with robust functionality. Since it is built on Laravel, Flarum is a great example on how Laravel can power truly community-driven platforms. Having such a clean and responsive user interface, Flarum brings an enthralling experience in forum for users, be it on desktop or mobile devices.
Features
- Lightweight and fast, ensuring smooth performance even for large communities.
- Designed mobile-first and works beautifully across all devices
- Highly extensible; great variety of official and community-built extensions
- Real-time notifications that keep people engaged
- Customer-editable permission system: can define user roles and access levels
4. Voyager
Voyager is an admin interface based on Laravel that provides a clean, easy-to-use dashboard for managing database content, media files, and users. Whether you’re building a custom CMS or just need an admin panel for your application, Voyager gives you all the tools you’ll need to CRUD data without breaking a sweat.
Features
- This is a fully functional media manager to upload and organize files
- A built-in role and permission management system
- An admin dashboard well-designed and fully customizable
- Simple database management using the CRUD interface
- Easy integration with any custom Laravel project
5. Laravel Generator
This generator will simplify your work on building Laravel applications by generating APIs, views, and controllers based on what you design in your database. Development time will be much reduced as boilerplate code is generated for you, offering you ample time to build innovative features.
Features
- Restful API Code Generation with Rich Documentation
- Creates Custom template so that it fits in beautifully in the design of your project
- Supports multiple front-end frameworks like Vue, React, and Bootstrap
- Helps create automated tests for the application and API documentation
6. Laravel Auth
Authentication is a core component of any modern web application. Laravel Auth happens to be a pre-built package that simplifies authentication. Be it basic login functionality or support for social media logins, two-factor authentication, or role-based access control, Laravel Auth is going to give you the complete solution.
Features
- Integration with social media sites, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter as a means of login
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) for added security
- Custom email templates to allow account validation and password reset
- Role-based access control to allow permission of users
- Track activities of users and audits
7. Apiato
Apiato is a framework based on Laravel that develops scalable and secure APIs. It uses modular, container-based architecture strictly for the easy organization of your code and maintenance in the long run. Apiato focuses more on the cleanliness and maintainability of being able to develop API-driven applications given by small startups and large enterprises.
Features
- JSON standards are natively supported
- Automatic generation of API documentation
- Modular container architecture promotes reusability and scalability
- Extensive Test Support for the reliability of your API and also bug-free
- Secure API Authentication using OAuth2
8. Cachet
Cachet is an open-source status page system that lets companies and developers update people on the real-time status of services. Have you ever wondered how companies manage those “service status” pages when showing uptime and downtime? It’s due to Cachet, which happens to be the tool behind it. It’s a Laravel-based solution to create beautiful, informative status pages that will keep your users up to speed with the health of your systems.
Features
- Friendly-looking status pages showing real-time data on your systems
- Track incidents to report and monitor outages within the service
- Performance metrics show uptime, latency, and other key data
- Multi-language support to reach your audience throughout the world
- The theme is fully customizable to match your brand
9. Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja is a powerful, open-source invoicing and billing application with Laravel. It has all the features to help freelancers or small businesses manage clients, send professional invoices, and collect payments. Since Invoice Ninja offers integration for so many payment gateways straight out of the box, billing is a snap when running your business.
Features
- Create and send professional invoices within minutes
- Works on recurring invoices and subscriptions to automatically charge the customers
- Integrate with other major payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net.
- Track expenses and time management.
- Client portal to be able to see invoices and history of payments
Conclusion
An open-source Laravel project show how versatile and powerful Laravel could be. Be it a forum, a documentation website, or even an invoicing platform – the ecosystem of tools provided by Laravel, along with the highly active community, provides everything you might need to start. Developers from all levels can also use these projects as excellent learning tools that give insight into best practices, code structure, and real-world applications.
So, if you’ve just begun with Laravel or want to contribute to some cool projects, take a look at these free laravel applications; you might just find a new favorite among them!
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