2024 UPDATE - LARAVEL 11

We're excited to announce that we have updated all of our blog post examples to reflect the new Laravel 11 version! Our previous examples were based on Laravel 10, but with the release of Laravel 11, we wanted to ensure that our readers have access to the most up-to-date information and examples.

Laravel 11 brings several new features and improvements that make web application development even more efficient and enjoyable. Throughout our blog post series, you'll find updated code snippets and explanations that take advantage of the latest Laravel 11 features.

Don't miss our latest blog post, "From Laravel 10 to 11: What You Need to Know" where we dive into the key updates and features of Laravel 11.

Learn Laravel Development with Practical Examples

We've written a series of blog posts to unlock the power of Laravel for you! The posts are helpful for those who are already familiar with Laravel or switching from a different tech stack. We've used practical examples that are easy to follow and teach the core Laravel features.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a modern PHP framework used for web application development. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern and is designed for ease of use, maintainability, and performance.

These core concepts and features make Laravel a robust, full-featured framework that is highly popular among developers for creating a wide range of web applications, from small projects to large-scale enterprise applications. It's perfect for creating custom websites, online stores, RESTful APIs for mobile apps, internal web apps, all while offering scalability and robust performance.

We've explained each section in other articles so feel free to visit them after looking at the summary below. The series explains the concepts based on the latest Laravel 11 version.

Some Core Concepts of Laravel

MVC Architecture: Laravel follows the MVC pattern, which separates the logic of the application into three interconnected components.
1. Model (data) - The Model is the data-handling layer of the application, responsible for representing business data and logic.
2. View (presentation) - The View is the user interface layer, responsible for displaying the application's data to the user.
3. Controller (requests and updates) - The Controller is the intermediary that handles user input, processes requests, and coordinates between the Model and the View.
Laravel Collections: They offer an elegant, object-oriented approach to array manipulation, with a suite of methods that streamline tasks like mapping, filtering, and sorting for more readable code. You will love these!
Routing: Laravel provides a simple and expressive way to define routes in your application. It helps you connect URLs to the right parts of your code, like a map that guides you to different pages of your website.
Eloquent ORM: Eloquent is Laravel's built-in Object-Relational Mapper (ORM), providing an active record implementation for working with your database. It's like a smart assistant that helps you get and change data in the database without needing to write complicated code.
- N+1 Problem: Laravel addresses the N+1 query issue with Eloquent ORM's eager loading, optimizing database queries and performance with the with() method.
- Debugbar: The Laravel Debugbar package offers a non-intrusive interface for performance monitoring and debugging, displaying essential information for developers.
Middleware: Middleware acts as a filtering mechanism that inspects HTTP requests entering your application. You can use middleware to authenticate users, log requests, or perform any other tasks before the request is handled by the application. Think of it as a security guard that checks requests coming into your website and can stop or change them before they reach your code.
Database Migrations and Seeding: Migrations provide version control for your database schema, and seeders fill it with initial data. This combination allows teams to quickly set up and share the same database configuration, making collaboration smoother.
Form Requests and Validation Rules: Form request validation in Laravel ensures clean controllers and valid data passage with encapsulated validation logic in request classes.
Authentication and Authorization: Laravel simplifies authentication with easy-to-implement scaffolding for registration, logins, and passwords. It also offers options like Laravel Breeze, Jetstream, and Fortify for a ready-made and customizable authentication framework.
- Blade and Breeze: Laravel's Blade templating engine delivers dynamic web pages with minimal overhead, while Breeze provides authentication scaffolding with Blade components.
Service Providers: Service providers in Laravel are pivotal for application bootstrapping, offering a modular approach to registering services and integrating third-party tools.
Events and Listeners: Laravel's event system allows you to listen for various events within your application. This can be used to notify users, react to user actions, or perform other event-driven programming tasks.
Task Scheduling: Laravel's scheduler allows the definition of command schedules within the application, replacing multiple cron entries with a single, expressive method.
Queues: Laravel's queue system defers the execution of time-consuming tasks to maintain application responsiveness, with a unified API for different queue backends.
Sending Emails: With Laravel, sending emails is streamlined through a fluent API that supports a variety of mail services, enabling easy notifications and rich content messaging.
Localization: Laravel enables easy setup of multi-language support, using language files for string translations, essential for applications serving a global audience.
Error Handling: Laravel provides a smooth error handling experience with detailed error pages for development and generic ones for production, along with extensive logging capabilities.
Testing: Laravel is built with testing in mind. It provides support for PHPUnit and PEST. It has several helpful testing methods, allowing for expressive testing of your applications.

Installing Laravel

The Laravel Installation process is very straightforward if you already have the setup ready. It all starts with this simple command:

composer create-project laravel/laravel blog

This command will create a new Laravel project in a directory called blog.

We explain the Laravel installation process and all the technologies required to start your Laravel journey.

Conclusion

We'll break down each Laravel concept further, so you'll be set to create anything from complex web apps to powerful APIs, all while pairing Laravel with front-end favorites like Vue.js and React. You'll be building impressive projects in no time! 🚀

Upcoming Articles in the Series

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If you need help with a Laravel project let's get in touch.

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Laravel 11 for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide to Learn the Concepts