Laravel 6 Notes

Here are notes on Laravel 6 and higher for those who are getting started with Laravel. 

Development Environment

Firstly, background to my common development environment which leads to the content of notes here.  This do change frequently based on project requirements.

• PHP v7.3.7 (cli)
• Centos v7.6
• Kernel v3.10.0-957.10.1.el7.x86_64
• Database Mongo v4.2.2
• Database Postgresql v11
• Apache httpd v2.4.6(CentOS)

On file naming convention

Its important to use name of files, classes and variables that distinguish between singular and plural forms. Example if there is a class to manage Customer base information, that class will be named Customer. A corresponding model will be created, called Customer and the migration file will be named Customers. The controller file will be named based on singular form, such as CustomerController and the view folder is named customer.

The table in database will be named customers with a unique field named id. If the customer have an assigned identification number, then provide a separate field such as customer_id.

For more details see note.

Command Line

These are common commands used when creating new application with Laravel framework.
 

Here I refer to a customer as having the fields for customer id (customer_id), name (name) and a contact telephone number (tel). Through Laravel, it should generate its own id as a unique key, which will be different from the customer_id.

Create a new Laravel project using Composer

Ensure the Composer pre-requisites have been installed, then at the command prompt issue the composer command to generate the project files.

Example to create a project Sales
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel sales
cd sales

Next step is to configure the database for use with the project. This is done with the file .env

Create Model

php artisan make:model Customer

This generates class User and the file app/Customer.php
There are variables that can be declared for this class, example;

1. protected $fillable - for visible user input in forms
2. protected $hidden - non visible data in forms and display
3. protected $cast - change value to another type.
4. protected $table - name of table for this class (if different from class name)
5. protected $primaryKey - id for the user registering

Another method is to combine one command that generates the model, resource, controller and migration files

php artisan make:model Customer -crmf

Where
cr = resource controller
m = migration
f = factory

This generates the required files for model (app/Article.php and app/Person.php), controller ( app/Http/Controllers/ArticleController.php), migration (database/migrations/yyy_mm_dd_id_create_people_table.php and database/migrations/yyy_mm_dd_id_articles_table.php) and factory ( database/factories/ArticleFactory.php and database/factories/PersonFactory.php).

Migration

Create Migration Table

php artisan make:migration create_customers_table

This generates the file in database/migration/xxx_customers_table.php

Example of file contents;

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class CreateCustomersTable extends Migration

{

    /**

     * Run the migrations.

     *

     * @return void

     */

    public function up()

    {

        Schema::create('customers', function (Blueprint $table) {

            $table->bigIncrements('id');

            $table->string('name');

            $table->string('reference');

            $table->string('phone')->nullable();

            $table->string('email')->nullable();

            $table->string('descriptions')->nullable();            

            $table->string('created_by')->nullable();

            $table->string('updated_by')->nullable();

            $table->timestamps();

        });

    }

    /**

     * Reverse the migrations.

     *

     * @return void

     */

    public function down()

    {

        Schema::dropIfExists('customers');

    }

}

Controller and route

Create Controller

php artisan make:controller CustomerController

This generates the file in app/Http/Controllers/CustomerController.php

To generate a controller filled with resources;

php artisan make:controller CustomerController --resources

Create Route to Controller Functions

Route::resource('/customers', 'Customer\CustomerController', ['except' => ['create', 'edit']]);

Edit the file route/web.php with above line. This will search for the common functions in the controller and build the required urls. In this case, create and edit is not created.

Display routes

At command prompt, run
php artisan route:list

Start the application

Default Laravel application is started at port 8000 when at the command prompt it is started with;
php artisan serve

Or if this is to be accessed from another PC (Example IP 10.1.1.7) in the network.
php artisan serve --host 10.1.1.7

View web application

In a web browser, open URL to your application. In the case web browser is on the same PC as the application.

http://localhost:8000/customers/

Random data generator

Generate Random Data with Faker

Edit the file database/factories/CustomerFactory.php

..to do in next posting..

Seed

Create Seeder

php artisan make:seeder CustomerTableSeeder

This generates initial data for the application in file  database/seeds/CustomerTableSeeder.php

Load data with the command

php artisan db:seed

Or selectively choose
php artisan db:seed --class=CustomerTableSeeder

Add data in seeder file

Example edit file database/seeds/CustomerTableSeeder.php

public function run()
{
    //
    $customers= [
    ['customer_id'=>'A1001', 'name'=>'Yamada', 'phone'=>'12342000'],
    ['customer_id'=>'A1002', 'name'=>'Joe', 'phone'=>'12346543']
    ];
    foreach($customers as $customer){
        Customer::updateOrCreate(['customer_id' => $customer['customer_id']],$customer);
    }
}

This loads the 2 data into database.

Example seeder file using Factory classes

Edit the seeder file to create sample data.

$user = Factory(App\User::class)->create(
  ['name' => 'Example User','email' => 'manager@example.com',
]);

The DatabaseSeeder file

It is common to have DatabaseSeeder.php listed with specific order of the seeder files to be loaded. This is due to data dependencies between tables and table constrains.

This can be edited in the file database/seeds/DatabaseSeeder.php

Example to load our seeder file

public function run(){
    if (app()->environment() == 'production') {
        $this->call(ThemesTableSeeder::class);
        $this->call(LanguagesTableSeeder::class);
    } else {
        $this->call(UsersTableSeeder::class);
        $this->call(CustomersTableSeeder::class);
        $this->call(ThemesTableSeeder::class);
        $this->call(LanguagesTableSeeder::class);
    }
}

Project Files or classes are Not Found, but it exist?

When updated or added routes, migration file, seeder file and etc. are not detected OR gives an error similar to "Not Found", its possible to refresh the Laravel Framework to detect the latest files. There are 2 methods and depends on your situation.

1. Using Composer

  composer dump-autoload

This executes vendor/composer/autoload_classmap.php which generates or rebuilds the list of project file and classes. Nothing is downloaded.

2. Using Artisan (DEPRECATED as of Laravel 5 and above)

 php artisan dump-autoload

Executes composer with optimised flags, to rebuild list of project files then recompile required files. The file composer.json is referred and other dependencies are downloaded as part of this process.

Debugging

Debugging can be done with the use of log files, see Laravel Logging

Here is a short tutorial PART 1, PART 2.