In this article, I will analyze the evolution of Laravel, in honor of its 12th anniversary, examining the best practices and impressive features offered by the latest stable version, along with some interesting and fun facts about it. Despite the emergence of powerful frameworks like Express, Next, Nuxt, Nest, and the consistent presence of Symfony, Spring, Django, and .NET, Laravel remains one of the most common choices for designing and architecting PHP-based backend applications.
Story of Laravel
Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that has gained immense popularity among developers worldwide. It was created by Taylor Otwell, a software developer from the United States, and was first released in June 2011.
The story of Laravel began with Taylor’s frustration with the existing PHP frameworks available at that time. He envisioned a framework that could simplify the development process, provide an elegant syntax, and offer powerful features to boost productivity.
Taylor Otwell did draw inspiration from the CodeIgniter framework while developing Laravel.
CodeIgniter was another popular PHP framework known for its simplicity and ease of use. Taylor recognized the positive aspects of CodeIgniter, such as its lightweight nature and straightforward syntax, and aimed to incorporate those qualities into Laravel. He sought to provide developers with a framework that retained the simplicity of CodeIgniter while also introducing additional features and improvements.
On the other hand, one of the driving factors behind Taylor Otwell’s decision to create Laravel was the lack of built-in authentication and authorization features in the CodeIgniter framework. While CodeIgniter provided a solid foundation for web development, it did not have comprehensive support for handling user authentication and authorization out of the box.
Recognizing the importance of these features in modern web applications, Taylor set out to build Laravel as a framework that would address this limitation. He wanted to provide developers with a seamless and efficient way to handle user authentication, role-based access control, and other related functionalities.
In Laravel, Taylor introduced a robust authentication system that simplifies the implementation of user registration, login, password management, and other authentication processes. The framework also includes features for managing user roles and permissions, making it easier to control access to different parts of the application based on user privileges.
By incorporating these authentication and authorization features directly into the framework, Laravel empowers developers to quickly and securely implement user management functionality without needing to build it from scratch. This focus on providing comprehensive authentication and authorization capabilities has been one of the key factors contributing to Laravel’s popularity and adoption.
Laravel does also have some underlying components based on Symfony, the popular PHP framework that is known for its power and flexibility. Taylor chose to base their framework on Symfony because it provides a solid foundation for building high-quality web applications.
By building Laravel on top of Symfony components, Laravel inherits the strong foundation provided by the framework, while being able to leverage the tested and proven functionality maintaining the flexibility to tailor Laravel to his specific vision. Overall, the decision to incorporate Symfony components into Laravel was a strategic choice by Taylor Otwell to build upon the strengths of Symfony and provide Laravel developers with a powerful and flexible framework for PHP web development.
Over the years, Laravel has grown from a small project to one of the most widely used PHP frameworks. It has garnered a strong community of developers who contribute to its continuous improvement and development. Laravel has gone through several major releases, each introducing new features and enhancements to address the evolving needs of web developers.
By providing a clean and elegant syntax, Laravel has made PHP development more enjoyable and efficient for developers. Its user-friendly documentation and active community support have played a significant role in its adoption and popularity among both beginners and experienced developers.
Today, Laravel is recognized for its ability to simplify complex tasks, boost developer productivity, and promote best practices in web development. Its ease of use, extensive feature set, and active community make it a top choice for building robust web applications and APIs.
Some facts about Laravel
The following are some interesting facts about Laravel, which you may not know yet.
The name “Laravel” is a reference to Laravel Bay, a stretch of water in the Seychelles.
-The Laravel logo is a stylized version of the letter “L”.
-Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks in the world, with over 1 million downloads.
-Laravel is used by a wide variety of companies, including Spotify, The New York Times, and BBC News.
-Laravel is known for its elegant design, powerful features, and large community of developers.
-Laravel is so popular that it has its own subreddit, r/laravel.
Awesome, right?
Laravel best practices
Laravel, being a powerful and versatile PHP framework, offers developers a wide range of tools and features to build robust web applications efficiently. However, to maximize the benefits of Laravel and ensure the maintainability and scalability of your projects, it is essential to follow Laravel’s best practices. These best practices are established guidelines that have been refined by the Laravel community based on their experiences and expertise. Let’s explore some of the key Laravel best practices.
Code Organization
Proper organization of code is crucial for maintainability. Laravel follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, and it is recommended to adhere to this pattern for structuring your code. Keep your controllers slim by moving business logic to dedicated service classes. Use meaningful and descriptive names for classes, methods, and variables to improve code readability.
Make great use of Laravel’s Built-in Features
Laravel provides a wide array of built-in features and helpers to streamline development. Familiarize yourself with these features and leverage them to enhance your productivity. Utilize the ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) capabilities of Eloquent for database interactions, make use of the query builder for flexible and secure database queries, and leverage Laravel’s caching mechanisms for optimized performance.
Efficient Database Querying
When working with databases, strive to write efficient and optimized queries. Utilize Eloquent’s query builder methods, such as eager loading and lazy loading, to minimize database queries. Leverage query scopes to encapsulate reusable query logic. Additionally, consider using database indexing and caching strategies to further enhance performance.
Validation and Form Requests
Laravel offers a powerful validation system that simplifies input validation. Instead of validating inputs within your controllers or models, create dedicated form request classes that handle validation logic. This promotes reusability and keeps your controllers clean. Form requests automatically validate incoming requests, making it easier to maintain and test your validation rules.
Security Considerations
Security should be a top priority in any web application. Laravel provides various security features, such as protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. Utilize Laravel’s built-in mechanisms, such as output escaping, CSRF protection middleware, and secure session management, to safeguard your application from common security vulnerabilities.
Testing and Test-Driven Development (TDD)
Laravel has excellent support for testing. Adopting test-driven development practices can help ensure the stability and reliability of your application. Write tests using Laravel’s testing framework, PHPUnit, to cover critical functionalities and edge cases. Automated testing helps catch bugs early, facilitates refactoring, and promotes code quality.
Utilize Laravel’s Official Packages
Laravel provides official packages like Breeze and Jetstream, which offer pre-built scaffolding and features for common tasks such as authentication and user management. These packages adhere to Laravel’s best practices and provide a solid foundation for starting new projects. By using these official packages, developers can save time and effort by leveraging the pre-built functionality, ensuring consistent implementation, and following established security practices.
Laravel Breeze is a lightweight authentication scaffolding package provided by Laravel. It offers a simple and minimalistic approach to user authentication, including login, registration, password reset, and email verification. Breeze is ideal for smaller projects or when you prefer a more customized authentication setup.
Laravel Jetstream is a more robust and feature-rich package that provides a powerful starting point for Laravel applications. It includes features like team management, two-factor authentication, API support, and more. Jetstream is well-suited for larger projects or those requiring advanced authentication and team collaboration functionalities.
Utilizing these official packages ensures that you’re following Laravel’s recommended practices, benefiting from built-in security measures, and saving valuable development time. Additionally, they can be customized and extended to meet your specific project requirements.
Stay Updated and Follow Community Guidelines
Laravel has an active and supportive community that continuously contributes to its improvement. Stay updated with the latest Laravel releases, security patches, and recommended practices. Participate in community forums, read documentation, and follow official Laravel resources to stay informed about Laravel best practices and emerging trends.
Laravel 10, the tenth stable version and the 10.12 version
Laravel 10, the latest major release of the Laravel framework, has brought exciting new features and enhancements that further solidify its position as one of the leading PHP frameworks. Let’s explore some of the notable updates and improvements introduced in the tenth version of Laravel.
Native PHP types
Laravel 10 now supports native PHP types for all user-land code. This means that you can use the latest PHP type-hinting features without having to rely on docblocks.
Laravel Pennant
Laravel Pennant is a new feature that provides a way to manage your application’s “feature flags”. Feature flags are a way to enable or disable certain features of your application without having to deploy new code.
As an example:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Laravel\Pennant\Facades\Pennant;
class HomeController extends Controller
{
public function index(Request $request)
{
// Define a new feature flag
Pennant::define('new-feature', function ($user) {
// Return true if the user is an admin
return $user->hasRole('admin');
});
// Check if the feature flag is enabled
if (Pennant::isEnabled('new-feature')) {
// Do something
}
}
}
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)In this example, we are defining a new feature flag called new-feature. We are then using the isEnabled() method to check if the feature flag is enabled. If it is, we can do something.
We can also use the isEnabledFor() method to check if the feature flag is enabled for a specific user. For example, the following code would check if the new-feature feature flag is enabled for an admin user:
if (Pennant::isEnabledFor('new-feature', $user)) {
// Do something
}
Code language: PHP (php)Laravel Pennant makes it easy to manage feature flags in your Laravel application. By using feature flags, you can enable or disable certain features of your application without having to deploy new code. This can be useful for testing new features, A/B testing, and more.
New Process abstraction layer
Laravel 10 introduces a new, developer-friendly abstraction layer for starting and interacting with external processes. This makes it easier to run background tasks, interact with APIs, and more.
Invokable validation rules
Laravel 10 now uses invokable validation rules by default. This means that you can write validation rules as functions instead of classes. This makes it easier to write and maintain validation rules.
Other improvements
In addition to these new features, Laravel 10 also includes a number of other improvements, such as support for PHP 8.2 (with PHP 8.1 as the minimum-required PHP version), updates to the Laravel official packages (Breeze, Cashier Stripe, Dusk, Horizon, Installer, Jetstream, Passport, Pint, Sail, Scout, Valet) and performance optimizations to enhance the speed and efficiency of web applications, such as improvements to the framework’s core, enhancements in database query execution, and optimized caching mechanisms.
Laravel 10.12
Just a few days ago, the Laravel team released Laravel 10.12, which includes a number of new features and bug fixes. The most notable are the following.
Conditional sleep
You can now add conditions to the new Sleep class introduced in Laravel 10.10. This can be useful for preventing your application from hanging if a task takes too long to complete.
Job timeout occurred event
A new event called JobTimedOut is now fired when a queue job times out. This event can be used to handle jobs that have timed out.
Inline attachment support for Markdown mailables
You can now embed attachments within your Markdown mailables. This can be useful for sending emails with images or other files.
Method not allowed HTTP assertion
You can now assert that an HTTP request method is not allowed. This can be useful for preventing users from accessing unauthorized resources.
Eloquent forceCreateQuietly() method
A new method called forceCreateQuietly() has been added to the Eloquent model. This method allows you to create a new model record without throwing an exception if the record already exists.
Add parameters to timezone validation rule
You can now add parameters to the timezone validation rule. This can be useful for validating timezones that are not in the default list.
