To me, Laravel takes the same amount to learn as Codeigniter.

With blade templating and user auth, laravel is not a big learning curve and easier in the long run.

Plus, forgive me for saying this on Laravel's forum, but do not be afraid to check out other frameworks like FuelPHP.

If money and time is involved than use Codeigniter. However, you also have to think about scalability.

I think CodeIgniter is easier to setup and easier to start coding since you don't have routes and such to worry about until you start to use it in a more advanced manner. it's also MVC and uses a somewhat good approach to OOP. BUT: it's old. it's no longer maintained by ellislab. it was made for php 5.3. it doesn't keep up to new ways of doing things like namespaces and such. future-proofing is a nightmare.

Laravel is good in the places where codeigniter is bad and better in the places where codeigniter is only good. it's flexible. it's modern. it's more integrated into the php community by using third party components that are already awesome like composer, symphony components and whoops (one of my personal favorites). it might need a little more learning time, but the big community behind it and the endless tutorials there are help you get into it really fast. even the docs are a really good place to start. blade gets tons of code in the templates out of the way, user auth is built in and it's super fun to use. I went back to codeigniter for one project a few months back and I missed all the power and flexibility of Eloquent and Migrations.

For me, personally, I'd switch to Laravel and never look back. It's worth investing the time cause then you'll be also ready for even bigger projects in the future.

Codeigniter is not dead but just like @SmthDiff said it is outdated. For example Codeigniter does not use the CLI. However, Codeigniter will never die because Epression Engine is built on that framework from what I understand.

actually @swgj19, they are rewriting expression engine from the ground up, no longer on codeigniter. it is outdated. but it will live in the past. many who wanted to maintain codeigniter after ellislab stopped switched to laravel after a while seeing it had similar things, but was already light years ahead. Even PyroCMS is being rewritten on top of laravel. codeigniter was awesome for it's time. and it took me a long time to move on. I didn't use it till 4.1.*. but I think it's time to let codeigniter rest in peace.

I was also a codeigniter user for a good couple years and found it a creditable framework for the level of projects I was working on at the time. However I started to notice a lack of version iterations and the community started to become a lot less chatty about it. In the end I think EllisLab dumped it from its product portfolio and it was returned the community to maintain, this is the point I looked elsewhere, so I had the Symfony2 vs Laravel showdown.

The one thing that won it for me was the Laravel community, a fantastic bunch of very intelligent people interested only in doing things in the right way, not to mention the oodles of support material out there that has already been mentioned.

Laravel can be used for small projects and extended to be used for enterprise level solutions so you get everything all in one neat package, could be a composer pun there.....anyway composer is also a fantastic reason to switch, you can bet that the wheel you want to invent has possibly already been invented so pull in the composer package and away you go.

I wish I had found Laravel when it first reared its head, since picking it up my knowledge of coding and application design principles have expanded 10 fold, although there is an investment of time in the short term, it will most certainly pay off in the long term!

I'm no expert, but have done sites. All these use core pdo in the background. One that I also have used is simplemvc. Link is http://simplemvcframework.com/. The database wrapper uses outright pdo, prepared statements, and binding. But ci vs laravel, I like laravel. You don't have to use blade, it's optional. You could also use active record, and oop without mvc. Or DBAL, or eolquent as a database wrapper without laravel. Really there are hundreds of choices. BUT LEARN YOUR SECURITY AND IMPLEMENT SECURITY.

Laravel, any day. Its fancy wrappers give you advantage of the community packages while retaining the simplicity.

I was a Codeigniter dev and loved it. But times have moved on. Over the last few months I've been learning Laravel with Jeffrey Way's Laracasts. I am now working on my first large Laravel project, and I am steaming though it. Doing things in a more OOP way and learning about the IoC and namespacing was daunting at first, but everything has clicked into place. I don't think the learning curve was as steep as I was expecting.

So to answer your question, if the client doesn't want the project completed yesterday, do it with Laravel. You will learn alot more about the framework than reading articles.

Its the same situation for me, i have huge 8 year of experince into CI but now as all internet talking about CI has no much capablity but laravel has, So i am not able to figure out is possible in laravel which i can not do into CI, Next Week i have to start a big project and i am still thinking which framework i should move with.

Thanks

It's really a dillema between your comfort vs. your investment. Like you are about to swim across a lake in a few days, but can only swim dog style. Will you make it? Yes. But you will be tired and can do better with other styles. So you can invest your time and learn something more efficient.

I'm not saying CI is doggy style, it's good framework. But Laravel is more powerful and you will benefit from learning it.

If you don't feel comfortable with Object Oriented Programming, you should take your a** now and learn it: http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.php - it's basics of the basics today and your decision shouldn't be made according to your lack of OOP knowledge.

What I would do? I would spend my private time (during the weekend perhaps) and learn something new. Then I would take further practical lessons by making the new project that I'm taking money for. :)

You won't believe me, but in real life there is no such thing as OOP. All programming is procedural. But it's how it's laid out that make some call it OOP. So written OOP, but interpreted procedural. So OOP is a writing style to sep classes from presentation, nothing more. The computer reads it totally different. And there is no such thing as laravel vs ci.
However there is laravel vs cakephp. These two are similar enough to compare.

@jimgwhit Philosopher alert! :D

i have switched to laravel when codeigniter 2 was available, recently one of my client project was on Codeigniter as a requirement, then i used the codeigniter 3 for the project and my thoughts on ci3 is that it is now more mature than any time of its life. the latest version is maintained by bcit they are really doing a good job.

Laravel is way better than Codeigniter. Specially Blade , Eloquent & route which is not present in codeigniter. but you can use laravel components in codeigniter with use of composer. I am using laravel components in codeigniter from more than year.

Frequent version changing is headache with Laravel. My friends recommending me Yii2 over laravel, Which is quite good. Yii2 uses symfony as laravel. My friends are using Yii2 for developing large projects. Yii2 has good community, many components, Built in grid . But Yii2 don't have jeffrey way to teach .

If you use laravel maintaining app for long time is quite difficult than Yii2 due to it's faster version changes (with syntax change or directory structure change). you can't use package created for L4.0 to 4.1 version of laravel. I switched totally to laravel from codeigniter more than 6 months ago but i still uncomfortable with it.

I am still confused what to use Yii2 or Laravel for big projects.

Final thoughts. Don't use codeigniter if you have time to learn Laravel or Yii2. If you don't have much time to learn laravel then use laravel components in your codeigniter project it worth more than using codeigniter alone. If it is big project you can look at Yii2 as it is easy to maintain for long time than laravel.

john5db is right, as well as components used laravel symphony by composer , codeigniter can do the same , I'm using codeigniter 2 and funcioanra with composer achieves that , I would add symphony CLI console and so now I can do migrations , drivers , compile stylus , creating themes , and ideology , " do not repeat yourself " and " convention over configuration " , besides that you add polymer components for web tabajar with which I am creating my own library of web components bootstrap . Laravel is better than codeigniter to climb but that does not change much time to adjust , however codeingiter to do things quickly is good just lacking people who will add current things as I did. By the way sorry for my English but not my language

Codeigniter is also best framework It is simple, and also quick to set up CodeIgniter. We can download the preferred version from CodeIgniter homepage. Otherwise, from GitHub. Thereafter, unzip the contents. But in this case laravel is the best php framework compared to codeigniter. Because recently number of people interested to learn about laravel its simple elegant and easy coding.So only they have choose laravel. Recently i research this topic about laravel vs codeigniter. You can read this here i have explained about pros and cons of laravel and codeigniter. may be its will be help you. http://laraveldevelopment.blogspot.in/2015/10/laravel-vs-codei...

Hello guys,

As it seems that this post is still hot, I did create a quick video (around 5 minutes) that have my opinion, based on my experience to help newcomers decide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3JWFgTjq94

Enjoy... and any feedback is always welcome :)

Laravel Framework Development seems to a CodeIgniter extension to me. I see several similarities. A template engine seems to make things easier to do than just including partial views all over as it is the case of CI. Laravel ORM could get it easier than writing plain SQL queries. I feel really easy with Laravel by just looking at its documentation.

We wrote a handy blog about this top here appropriated for 2017. Check out Laravel vs CodeIgniter vs Yii vs CakePHP

When I was a beginner I was struggling to learn the Laravel as it uses composer, Artisan CLI whereas CodeIgniter we just download the directory and start direct coding, When I was new to MVC architecture I started with CodeIgniter first and then after 1 month switched to Laravel. But anyhow Laravel is the best PHP framework to work on still, it is the popular and best php framework. Comparison of Laravel vs Codeigniter is here with google trends.

With more than four years of experience with Codeigniter PHP framework we believe that learning, setting up and working with it are all fairly easy. Even our junior developers are able to inculcate the skills necessary for scheduled delivery which, from a business standpoint is lucrative. Over time though, we realised that perhaps a PHP framework that is modern with lot more flexibility in terms of a structured coding pattern with scope for applications that we deliver to perform better is needed. That, in a nutshell is the reason behind the switchover to Laravel PHP framework. Laravel is an open-source PHP web application framework based on MVC architecture. The framework was created and maintained by Taylor Otwell since June 2011. The security feature of Laravel is prompt in taking appropriate action as and when there is a breach in security. The syntax patterns of Laravel are expressive and elegant. The reason behind the rapid emergence of this framework are:

Modular packaging with composer based dependency manager.

Class autoloader.

Eloquent ORM, the advanced active-record-pattern implementation

Query builder as an alternative to Eloquent ORM, for direct access to database.

Support of database platforms including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLServer.

RESTFul state control over controller methods.

Blade templating engine, simple yet flexible.

Rapid automation with inbuilt authentication mechanism, caching mechanism, powerful routing features, and session control.

IO component to handle requests and responses.

Artisan command line interface.

Unit testing support.

Great documentation.

The documentation of Laravel is detailed and along with sample codes it’s even easier to learn the technology. There are quite a few other successful PHP frameworks that developers have been using over the years, like Codeigniter, CakePHP, Zend, Yii, Symfony, and many more. Each of these frameworks have a reputation and have established thems

By:Xtreem Solution

Highly Skilled Laravel Developer

Dedicated PHP Developer