What is Laravel?
Why Interviewers Ask This
Interviewers use this question to quickly assess whether a candidate has the foundational knowledge required for Laravel development. It reveals whether you understand the building blocks that more complex concepts rely on.
Answer
Laravel is an open-source PHP web application framework created by Taylor Otwell, first released in 2011. It follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural pattern and is built on top of several Symfony components. Laravel is known for its elegant, expressive syntax that aims to make web development enjoyable and productive. It provides out-of-the-box features for routing, authentication, sessions, caching, queues, events, database ORM (Eloquent), and more. It is consistently the most popular PHP framework, with a large ecosystem of first-party packages (Sanctum, Passport, Horizon, Telescope) and a thriving community.
Pro Tip
Demonstrate both theoretical understanding and practical experience. Say what it is, then give an example of how you actually used it in a Laravel codebase.