This repo compares the top three batteries included fullstack web frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Django, and Laravel.
The goal of this repo is to provide a basic understanding of all three frameworks from one place.
- Founded
- Popularity
- Marketing & Community
- Funding
- Architecture
- ORM
- Database Migrations
- Forms
- Routing
- Project Structure
- Template Engine
- Authentication
- API Development
- Admin Interface
- Testing
- Asynchronous Processing
- Community and Ecosystem
- Learning Curve
- Performance
- Scalability
- Deployment Ease
Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson in 2004.
Django was created by Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison in 2005.
Laravel was created by Taylor Otwell in 2011.
Laravel has 77.6k+ stars on GitHub.
Django has 78.1k+ stars.
Ruby on Rails has 55.3k+ stars.
Laravel has an active and energetic community. An influencial developer and a company behind it.
Django has the most silent and calm community. The creators are hardly known to the users of the framework and there is no company with commercial intentions.
Ruby on Rails has an active community. Both the creator and the company behind it are known to the users and have great influence on the community.
Laravel generates revenue through the sale of commercial products like Forge, Envoyer, Nova, and Spark, in addition to sponsorships and donations. In 2024 Sept, Taylor Announced that Laravel has raised a 57M$ Series A in Partnership with Accel.
Django operates solely through donations and sponsorships to a non-profit foundation, the Django Software Foundation.
Ruby on Rails receives funding from its parent company, 37Signals, and contributions from its community and sponsors.
Laravel and Ruby on Rails follow the traditional MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern,
Django uses MTV (Model-Template-View) pattern, which is similar but emphasizes templates.
Django is not traditional MVC technically. The key difference is that Django's "View" takes on the role of the Controller, while its "Template" handles the presentation logic that would typically be in the View of an MVC framework.
Laravel uses Eloquent, which follows the Active Record pattern.
Ruby on Rails also uses the Active Record pattern.
Django uses Django ORM that follows the Data Mapper pattern.
Learn more from the book, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture where Martin Fowler coined the terms Active Record and Data Mapper patterns.
It is Django that deviates from Rails and Laravel by keeping the schema in one place. (models.py). Django is in that regard similiar to Prisma as you can always refer to the schema while developing.
Laravel uses the Artisan command-line tool for migrations.
Django uses makemigrations and migrate commands,
Ruby on Rails has its own migration system.
It was Ruby on Rails who pioneered and popularized the concept of database migrations in web frameworks.
Django has automated migrations Django automates migrations, based on models.py file which contains a replica of how the database looks like as of now. For JS devs, this is exactly how Prisma ORM works.(current state of db is in a file). Contrary to this Ruby and Laravel require additional tools and IDE assitance to reveal the db structure in code. Sometimes they are a terminal command and not exactly code.
Django comes with model forms, Another area where django automates through its ORM. Forms are generated as a replica of all the fields on the database and comes with built in form validation. To get models forms working very little code is needed. The amount of code written is further reduced through generic views in django.
Generic views in django are views provided by the framework for really common operations (eg: CRUD). Connecting the view to a model and adding a template is the only code that is written in this case. The development speedups that django provides through generic views are really useful for MVPs and hackathons
Ruby on rails have form_for helper which generates a form html based on models, quite like django forms and includes validation as well. Rails require a little bit more manual effort than django however to get it setup.
Laravel unlike rails and django lacks tight integration between models and forms. Laravel Collective provides a form builder package for easier form creation. There are third party packages in Laravel ecosystem that implements django model forms.
Rails has a single routes.rb file. Laravel uses files within the routes directory for routes. Django uses multiple urls.py files within its apps, and is mapped to a view
Laravel allows middleware to be assigned in the route definition contrary to rails and django
Django follows a project and app structure. Each project would have multiple apps. Each app would have their own static files, templates, urls, views, models and even the database migrations. Project would also have a urls.py file which connects all the apps by including their routes. This app driven structure in django speeds up development due to it being really easy to jump around code, making reusable apps, etc.
finance_project/
│
├── finance_project/
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── settings.py
│ ├── urls.py
│ └── wsgi.py
│
├── income/
│ ├── migrations/
│ ├── static/
│ ├── templates/
│ │ └── income/
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── admin.py
│ ├── apps.py
│ ├── models.py
│ ├── tests.py
│ ├── urls.py
│ └── views.py
│
├── expense/
│ ├── migrations/
│ ├── static/
│ ├── templates/
│ │ └── expense/
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── admin.py
│ ├── apps.py
│ ├── models.py
│ ├── tests.py
│ ├── urls.py
│ └── views.py
│
├── templates/
│ └── base.html
│
├── static/
│
├── manage.py
└── requirements.txt
Ruby on Rails follows a convention-over-configuration approach with a well-defined project structure. A Rails application is organized into several directories, including app (containing models, views, controllers, helpers, and assets), config (for routes, database configuration, and environments), db (for database migrations and seeds), and test (for unit and integration tests). The app directory is further subdivided to separate concerns, with models handling data and business logic, controllers managing request flow, and views rendering the user interface. Rails uses a centralized routing system in config/routes.rb to map URLs to controller actions. This structured approach promotes code organization, maintainability, and adherence to the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern, allowing developers to quickly navigate and understand the codebase.
finance_app/
│
├── app/
│ ├── controllers/
│ │ ├── incomes_controller.rb
│ │ └── expenses_controller.rb
│ ├── models/
│ │ ├── income.rb
│ │ └── expense.rb
│ ├── views/
│ │ ├── incomes/
│ │ ├── expenses/
│ │ └── layouts/
│ ├── helpers/
│ └── assets/
│
├── config/
│ ├── routes.rb
│ └── database.yml
│
├── db/
│ └── migrations/
│
├── lib/
│
├── log/
│
├── public/
│
├── test/
│
├── vendor/
│
├── Gemfile
└── Rakefile
Laravel, employs a modular and intuitive project structure. The main application logic resides in the app directory, which contains subdirectories for HTTP controllers, models, and various service classes. Views are stored in the resources/views directory, while routes are defined in the routes directory, typically separated into web.php for web routes and api.php for API routes. Laravel uses a powerful ORM called Eloquent, with model classes typically placed in app/Models. The database directory houses migrations and seeders for database management. Public assets are stored in the public directory, while configuration files are located in the config directory. Laravel's structure encourages the use of service providers and facades for extending functionality, promoting a clean and modular codebase that's easy to maintain and scale.
finance_app/
│
├── app/
│ ├── Http/
│ │ ├── Controllers/
│ │ │ ├── IncomeController.php
│ │ │ └── ExpenseController.php
│ │ └── Requests/
│ ├── Models/
│ │ ├── Income.php
│ │ └── Expense.php
│ └── Providers/
│
├── config/
│
├── database/
│ ├── migrations/
│ └── seeders/
│
├── public/
│
├── resources/
│ ├── views/
│ │ ├── incomes/
│ │ ├── expenses/
│ │ └── layouts/
│ ├── lang/
│ └── js/
│
├── routes/
│ ├── web.php
│ └── api.php
│
├── storage/
│
├── tests/
│
├── vendor/
│
├── .env
├── artisan
├── composer.json
└── package.json
Laravel uses Blade
Django uses the Django Template Language (DTL)
Ruby on Rails uses ERB (Embedded Ruby).
Blade and ERB allow language code within templates, offering flexibility and ease. DTL is highly restrictive yet understanding the difference in MTV and MCV helps understand the design philosophy behind it.
Django includes a comprehensive built-in authentication system that handles user accounts, groups, permissions, and cookie-based user sessions. It's highly customizable and integrates seamlessly with Django's admin interface.
Laravel provides a full authentication system out of the box with the auth scaffolding. It includes features like
registration, login, password reset, and email verification. Laravel also has multiple first-party packages related to
authentication.
Ruby on Rails doesn't have a built-in authentication system, but commonly uses the Devise gem. Devise is a flexible authentication solution that provides a full MVC solution based on Warden. It offers modules for various authentication strategies, including database authentication, OAuth, and LDAP.
All three frameworks support customization to meet specific project requirements, including role-based access control and API authentication methods like JWT.
Laravel uses Sanctum for API authentication, which focuses on simplicity.
Django has the comprehensive Django REST Framework (DRF) but it is not built-in.
Ruby on Rails uses Active Model Serializers for API development, which is lightweight but extensible.
Django has a built-in, customizable admin interface which is enough for most teams with developers. The design sucks yet offers all sorts of CRUD operations within this interface.
Laravel and Ruby on Rails rely on packages or gems for admin interfaces. Laravel has multiple first-party packages for admin panels, like Nova and Voyager.
Laravel uses PHPUnit with Laravel-specific assertions
Django has a built-in test framework based on unittest,
Ruby on Rails uses Minitest by default, with RSpec as a popular alternative. All three frameworks provide comprehensive testing tools, with Rails having a particularly rich testing ecosystem.
Laravel has a well-integrated queue system with various drivers.
Django uses third-party solutions like Celery or Huey, with a native task backend currently in development.
Ruby on Rails provides Active Job with various backends for background processing.
All three frameworks have large, active communities. Ruby on Rails benefits from its maturity and a vast ecosystem of gems. Laravel is known for rapid adoption of new features, and Django has a focus on stability.
Laravel and Ruby on Rails are generally considered easier for beginners.
Django has a steeper initial learning curve.
Personal Thoughts: When it comes to Django's learning curve, the "Django way" of doing things are hard to accept initially when you have not faced those situations yourself. Accepting the Django Way is stable and has many perks but not know the reasons for why Django wants you to do certain things a certain way is why Django may seem to be not very easy to figure out at first.
All three frameworks perform well when optimized.
Django often edges out for database-intensive operations.
Laravel has tools like Laravel Octane for optimization, and Ruby on Rails has focused on performance improvements in recent versions.
All three frameworks can scale effectively with proper architecture.
Django and Ruby on Rails have more high-profile, high-traffic use cases demonstrating their scalability.
- Instagram - Django - Carl Meyer about Django @ Instagram at Django: Under The Hood 2016
- Shopify - Rails - RailsConf 2022 - Shopify
- Threads - Django - The inside story of Meta’s newest social app
Laravel offers managed services like Forge and Vapor for easy deployment.
Django as a framework does not offer much assitance when it comes to deployment. Some popular solutions include cookie-cutter django and the many different dockerrized templates. Deploying django to railway is one of the most simple and fast aproach. (Dockerization not nessesary due to NIXPACKS)
Ruby on Rails has many established deployment patterns.