What is "laravel"

Laravel is an open-source framework for developing web applications and services with PHP.

Uses the MVC architecture, proposes to encourage the use of good programming practices and use of the PSR-2 standard as a guide to code writing style.

The LTS versions (Long Term Support) ensure that the framework will receive bug fixes for 2 years and fixes security issues for 3. For common versions, support drops to 6 months for bug fixes and 1 year for fixes of security issues¹.

It was created in 2011 and has great influence from frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and ASP.NET MVC.

Main features

Some of the main features of Laravel

Eloquent
Blade
Artisan
Stabbing
Native Authentication
Container Service and Dependency Injection
Validation
Queue
Cache
Email
Helpers for automated testing
Laravel Scout (integration with search Engines)
Laravel Passport (Oauth2 Server)
Laravel Echo (Web Sockets)
Laravel Dusk (browser acceptance and automation tests)
Laravel Mix (compiler of Assets and other things related to front-end, former Laravel Elixir)

Versions

Major features embedded in each version² sane:

Laravel 4.1: rewritten in route engine, remember my password, SSH component;
Laravel 4.2: Laravel Forge, Laravel Cashier, Laravel Homestead, segregation of features in Traits (Soft Deleting and Auth), simple paging;
Laravel 5.0: new project folder structure, middlewares, Controller Method Injection, Form Request, validation via controllers, component interfaces via Contracts, Events objects, Commands for Queues, Laravel Scheduler, use of Dotenv, integration with Flysystem, Laravel Socialate, Laravel Elixir;
Laravel 5.1 LTS: Event Broadcasting, parameters in middleware, improvement in integration tests, Model Factories, simplification of Artisan console commands, change of Commands to Jobs;
Laravel 5.2: Multi-auth, Authentication Scaffolding, Implicit Model Binding, Middleware Groups, Arrays Validation, Web token authentication;
Laravel 5.3: Laravel Scout, Laravel Passport, Laravel Echo, Mailable Classes and Notifications, $loop Blade variable and leaner folder structure;
Laravel 5.4: Laravel Dusk, Laravel Mix, Markdown-based Notifications and Emails, Blade "Components" and "slots", Realtime Facades and Middlewares for Input Requests sanitization;
Laravel 5.5 LTS: Whoops, Request Request Validation, Frontend Presets, API Resources, Trustedproxy, Dynamic Templates with View::first, dd and dump in collections, Package Auto-Discovery, throw_if and throw_unless Helpers, Custom Exception Reporting, Migrate Fresh Command support, support for Email Mailables themes, requires PHP 7.0+.

Use of Tags

A question about Laravel should involve at least these tags:

php Larable

More specific tags can be used, such as release tags:

Laravel-4 Laravel-5 Laravel-5.2

Note: Try to use the older version where a certain feature already existed, unless you want an answer to that particular version.

There are also tags for specific features:

Laravel-Blade Laravel-eloquent Laravel-auth Laravel-rota Artisan

Examples

A question about views in Laravel

php Larable Laravel-Blade

Question about Eloquent no Laravel 4:

php Larable Laravel-4 Laravel-eloquent

Question about Authentification in Laravel 5.2:

php Larable Laravel-5.2 Laravel-auth

If you are not sure which version your question applies to, use only: