Leaf Q&A

[mychidarko]

👋 Welcome!

This space holds a list of questions asked by the Leaf community and other people concerning Leaf and it's features, codebase and the reasons some things were done the way they're done. We hope that you:

• Ask questions you’re wondering about.
• Engage with other community members.
• Welcome others and are open-minded. Remember that this is a community we
  build together 💪.

If there's anything you'll like to know about Leaf, just ask away!

[mychidarko]

(From Tristan) Do you consider Leaf PHP to be stable and safe to use?

[mychidarko]

Yes!! Leaf is very stable and safe to use. It's already being used for some big projects, blogs, personal websites and client/company projects as well.

[mychidarko]

(From Tristan) Do you plan to release some parts (Router, DB, Auth, Flash, etc) of the framework as separate packages, or I need to use it all?

[mychidarko]

It's an idea we've been looking at for a while. Modules like HTTP, Auth, and Db will be separated into independently managed projects which are just brought together in the main leaf repo, though that will come in a later release. This will allow you to manually assemble Leaf and create a "custom build" with only the features you need in your app.

[mychidarko]

😏 I'm pleased to tell you that this has finally been implemented and will soon be released as leaf 3

[mychidarko]

(From Drew) It seems extremely similar to Slim3.
Why not just use Slim3?

[mychidarko]

Leaf is actually inspired by Slim and uses a very similar approach to Slim's routing, middleware and a bunch of other features. However, "Simplicity without sacrificing all the cool magic" is Leaf's main goal, so although it is as simple and lightweight as Slim, it comes with a whole lot more functionality like simple authentication, a really simple db tool, session, cookie and UI helpers.

To add to all of this, Leaf can be easily converted into a full-blown MVC framework as done with Leaf MVC since it comes with all the required tools out of the box.

[mychidarko]

(From Tristan) The App.php class seems a bit overcrowded. Do you plan to separate some methods into separate classes?

[mychidarko]

App.php is definitely overcrowded, there's too much going on in just that single file, I'm also against that sort of thing, but I'm working on it bit by bit. All the v2.4 releases of Leaf have been focusing on usability and the refactoring of the entire codebase, adding static methods and purging old code. There's still a lot to be cleaned up, especially in the App.php file, but I'm really working on it, and you can expect some more refactoring in the upcoming version 2.5 release this month.

[mychidarko]

(From Primer) I’m a laravel enthusiast. What are the benefits to me of leaf over laravel?

[mychidarko]

Laravel is awesome, however, laravel has way too much. It contains tons of functionality that are not used in most apps people build. Leaf handles this by giving you a lean but powerful setup, with a ton of modules available for whenever your app scales. This means that you can build faster and cleaner apps without sacrificing all the goodies you get from bigger frameworks

[mychidarko]

(From Chema) why not use lumen then?

[mychidarko]

Lumen is also great, it's much lighter than laravel, however, it still interferes with a lot of things you do and gives you a structure to work with (not a bad thing), but not needed in all cases.

Another big thing is how leaf focuses on simplicity and overall developer experience. We're not just serving powerful software, but software you can relate to.

Take a look at this demo API built with leaf in less than 30 lines https://leafphp.dev/docs/introduction/first-app.html

[mychidarko]

(From Primer) Is it an MVC framework?

[mychidarko]

Leaf at its core is not an MVC framework, but there are variations of leaf: Leaf MVC and Leaf API which are MVC frameworks and use Leaf as its core