Why Laravel?

1
WHY LARAVEL?
“The PHP Framework For Web Artisans”
Introduction to Laravel
Jonathan Goode

2 . 1
HISTORY BEHIND THE VISION
, a .NET developer in Arkansas (USA), was using an
early version of CodeIgniter when the idea for Laravel came to
him.
“I couldn't add all the features I wanted to”, he says, “without
mangling the internal code of the framework”.
He wanted something leaner, simpler, and more flexible.
Taylor Otwell

2 . 2
HISTORY BEHIND THE VISION
Those desires, coupled with Taylor's .NET background, spawned
the framework that would become Laravel.
He used the ideas of the .NET infrastructure which Microso had
built and spent hundreds of millions of dollars of research on.
With Laravel, Taylor sought to create a framework that would be
known for its simplicity.
He added to that simplicity by including an expressive syntax, clear structure,
and incredibly thorough documentation.
With that, Laravel was born.

3 . 1
THE EVOLUTION OF LARAVEL
Taylor started with a simple routing layer and a really simple
controller-type interface (MVC)
v1 and v2 were released in June 2011 and September 2011 respectively, just
months apart
In February 2012, Laravel 3 was released just over a year later
and this is when Laravel's user base and popularity really began
to grow.

3 . 2
THE EVOLUTION OF LARAVEL
In May 2013, Laravel 4 was released as a complete rewrite of the
framework and incorporated a package manager called
.
Composer is an application-level package manager for PHP that
allowed people to collaborate instead of compete.
Before Composer, there was no way to take two separate
packages and use diﬀerent pieces of those packages together to
create a single solution.
Laravel is built on top of several packages most notably
.
Composer
Symfony

3 . 3
LARAVEL TODAY
Laravel now stands at version 5.3 with 5.4 currently in
development
Support for PHP 7 has recently been added to Laravel 4.2.20
and for the first version ever, long term support has been
guaranteed for 5.1

4 . 1
ARCHITECTURE
Model
Everything database related - Eloquent ORM (Object Relational
Mapper)
View
HTML structure - Blade templating engine
Controller
Processing requests and generating output
+ Facades, Dependency Injection, Repositories, etc...

4 . 2
FIRSTLY, WHY OBJECT ORIENTED PHP?
Logic is split into classes where each class has specific attributes
and behaviours.
This leads to code that is more maintainable, more predictable
and simpler to test.

5 . 1
ROUTES
Routes (/routes) hold the application
URLs
web.php for web routes
api.php for stateless requests
console.php for Artisan commands
// Visiting '/' will return 'Hello World!'
Route::get('/', function()
{
return 'Hello World!';
});

Route::get('/tasks/{id}', 'TasksController@view');
Visiting /tasks/3 will call the controller method that deals
with viewing that task that has an id of 3

5 . 2
Route::post('/tasks/add', 'TasksController@store');
Handles posting for data when creating a form
No need to check for
isset($_POST['input'])

5 . 3
6 . 1
CONTROLLERS
Handle the logic required for processing requests
namespace AppHttpControllersAdmin;
class TasksController extends Controller
{
    public function view($id)
    {
        return "This is task " . $id;
    }
}

6 . 2
ENHANCED CONTROLLER
class TasksController extends Controller
{
    public function view($id)
    {
        // Finds the task with 'id' = $id in the tasks table
        $task = Task::find($id);
        // Returns a view with the task data
        return View::make('tasks.view')>with(compact('task'));
    }
}

7 . 1
MODELS
Classes that are used to access the
database
A Task model would be tied to the tasks table in MySQL
namespace AppModels;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentModel;
use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentSoftDeletes;
class Task extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes;
    protected $fillable = ['title', 'done',];
    protected $dates    = ['deleted_at'];
}

7 . 2
QUERIES
// Retrieves the tasks that have a high priority
Task::where('priority', '=', 'high')>get();
Task::wherePriority('high')>get(); // *Magic*!
// Retrieves all the tasks in the database
Task::all();
// Retrieves a paginated view for tasks, 20 tasks per page
Task::paginate(20);
// Inserts a new task into the database
Task::create(['description' => 'Buy milk']);
// (Soft) deletes the task with an id of 5
Task::find(5)>delete();
// Permanently deletes all soft deleted tasks
Task::onlyTrashed()>forceDelete();

8 . 1
VIEWS
Blade is a simple, yet powerful templating engine provided with
Laravel
// This view uses the master layout
@extends('layouts.master')
@section('content')
<p>This is my body content.</p>
@stop
@section('sidebar')
<p>This is appended to the master sidebar.</p>
@stop

8 . 2
@foreach($tasks as $task)
<p>{{ $task>title }}</p>
@endforeach
=
<?php foreach ($tasks as $task) {
<p><?php echo $task>title ?></p>
<?php endforeach ?>

8 . 3
<p>Tasks:</p>
<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>ID</th>
            <th>Title</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        @foreach($tasks as $task)
        <tr>
            <td>{{ $task>id }}</td>
            <td>{{ $task>title }}</td>
        </tr>
        @endforeach
    </tbody>
</table>

8 . 4
9 . 1
ARTISAN
Artisan is the command-line interface included with Laravel
It provides a number of helpful commands that can assist you
while you build your application
$ php artisan list
$ php artisan help migrate

9 . 2
DATA MIGRATION AND SEEDING
$ php artisan make:migration create_users_table
Migration created successfully!
$ php artisan migrate seed
Migrated: 2016_01_12_000000_create_users_table
Migrated: 2016_01_12_100000_create_password_resets_table
Migrated: 2016_01_13_162500_create_projects_table
Migrated: 2016_01_13_162508_create_servers_table

10 . 1
KEY CHANGES IN LARAVEL 5
DIRECTORY STRUCTURE
Laravel 5 implements the autoloading standard which
means all your classes are namespaced
The default namespace for your web application is app
You can change this using php artisan app:name <your‐app‐name>
assets, views, and lang now live in a resources folder
config, storage, database, and tests directories have
been moved to the root of the project
bootstrap, public, and vendor retain their place
PSR-4

10 . 2
ENVIRONMENT DETECTION
Instead of all the complex nested configuration directories, you
have a .env file at the root of your project to take care
of the application environment and all the environment
variables.
It is useful to create a .env.example file to provide a template
for other team members to follow
(dotEnv)

10 . 3
ROUTE MIDDLEWARE
Middleware can be used to add extra layers to your HTTP routes.
If you want code to execute before every route or before specific
routes in your application, then such a piece of code is a good fit
for a middleware class.
For example, let's say you want to block out a certain range of
IPs from your application to make your application unavailable
in that region.
In such a case, you will need to check the client IP before every
request and allow/disallow them entry to your application.
$ php artisan make:middleware "RegionMiddleware"

10 . 4
METHOD INJECTION
Until version 4.2, you had to request the Inversion of Control
(IoC) container to provide a class instance or create it in your
controller's constructor to make it accessible under the class
scope.
Now, you can declare the type hinted class instance in the
controller method's signature and the IoC container will take
care of it, even if there are multiple parameters in your controller
function's signature.

10 . 5
EXAMPLE OF METHOD INJECTION
// TaskController.php
use AppHttpControllersController;
use AppHttpRequestsAdminTaskUpdateRequest;
use AppModelsTask;
class TaskController extends Controller {
    public function store(TaskUpdateRequest $request) {
        $task = Task::create($request>except('_token'));
        return redirect(route('admin.task.index'))>with('success',
                        trans('general.created', ['what' => 'Task']));
    }
}
/**/
class TaskUpdateRequest extends FormRequest {
    public function rules() {
        return ['title' => 'required|min:3|unique:tasks,title',];
    }
}

10 . 6
CONTRACTS
Contracts are actually interface classes in disguise.
Interfaces are a tried and tested method for removing class
dependency and developing loosely coupled so ware
components.
.
Most of the major core components make use of these contracts to keep the
framework loosely coupled.
Laravel buys into the same philosophy ⇲

10 . 7
AUTHENTICATION
Authentication is part of almost all the web applications you
develop, and a lot of time is spent writing the authentication
boilerplate.
This is not the case any more with Laravel 5. The database
migrations, models, controllers, and views just need to be
configured to make it all work.
Laravel 5 has a Registrar service, which is a crucial part of this
out of the box, ready to use authentication system.

10 . 8
OTHER KEY CHANGES IN LARAVEL 5
Queue and Task
Scheduling
Crons taken care of
Multiple File Systems
Local or remote (cloud based)
Route Caching
Events
Commands

11 . 1
LARAVEL ELIXIR
provides a fluent, expressive interface to compiling
and concatenating your assets.
If you've ever been intimidated by learning Gulp or Grunt, fear
no more.
Elixir makes it a cinch to get started using Gulp to compile Sass
and other assets.
It can even be configured to run your tests
Laravel Elixir
(Assumes sass is located at resources/assets/sass, etc.)

// gulpfile.js
const elixir             = require('laravelelixir');
elixir.config.publicPath = 'public_html/assets';
require('laravelelixirvue2');
elixir(mix => {
    mix.sass('app.scss')
       .webpack('app.js')
       .copy('node_modules/bootstrapsass/assets/fonts/bootstrap/',
             'public_html/assets/fonts/bootstrap');
});

11 . 2
// Run all tasks and build your assets
$ gulp
// Run all tasks and minify all CSS and JavaScript
$ gulp production
// Watch your assets for any changes rebuild when required
$ gulp watch

11 . 3
12
LARAVEL STARTER ⇲
Created specifically to speed up development at UofA
Improved version of Laravel 4.1 with backported
enhancements from 4.2
This was due to the version of PHP (5.3.8) we previously had to use
Has code specific for the way we have to work with web
accounts
Configured to use public_html rather than public
LDAP integration complete with configuration for abdn.ac.uk
Enhanced String and Array helpers
UofA logos
etc.
Currently in the process of updating for Laravel 5.3

13 . 1
LARAVEL HAS MORE UP ITS SLEEVE
STANDALONE SERVICES
Provision and deploy unlimited PHP applications on DigitalOcean, Linode,
and AWS
A package that provides scaﬀolding for subscription billing, invoices, etc.
A deployment service focused on the deployment side of applications and
includes things like zero downtime deploys, health checks, cron job
monitoring, and more
Forge
Spark
Envoyer

13 . 2
BAKED INTO LARAVEL 5
Event broadcasting, evolved. Bring the power of WebSockets to your
application without the complexity.
API authentication without the headache. Passport is an OAuth2 server that's
ready in minutes.
Driver based full-text search for Eloquent, complete with pagination and
automatic indexing.
Laravel Echo
Laravel Passport
Laravel Scout

13 . 3
OTHER DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
Powered by Vagrant, Homestead gets your entire team on the same page
with the latest PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Redis, and more.
Cachet is the best way to inform customers of downtime. This is your status
page.
If all you need is an API and lightning fast speed, try Lumen. It's Laravel
smaller-light.
Need a CMS that runs on Laravel and is built for developers and clients? Look
no further.
Homestead
Cachet
Lumen
Statamic

14
MORE RESOURCES
Over 900 videos covering all aspects of using
Laravel
https://laravel.com/
https://laracasts.com/

Why Laravel?

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