Laravel - The PHP Framework for Web Artisans

By Harin Samaranayake

Laravel is considered the PHP Framework for Web Artisans. According to hackr.io, it is the best PHP framework in 2021. It was developed by Taylor Otwell in June 2011. Laravel is free and open-source. It follows the Model–View–Controller (MVC) architectural pattern.

In this blog post, you will learn how to create a simple CRUD application using Laravel.

Before we dig into the application there are several prerequisites.

XAMPP - Apache PHP MySQL (https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html) Composer - PHP Dependency Manager (https://getcomposer.org) VSCode - Editor (https://code.visualstudio.com)

Once you have set up the above-mentioned requisites a Laravel application can be created.

Common terms used in the Laravel eco system.

Composer - PHP dependency manager Artisan - Command Line Interface (CLI) Tinker - CLI to interact with the Database Eloquent - Object Relational Mapper (ORM) Blade - PHP templating engine

Setup

  • Navigate to the htdocs folder in the xampp using the intergraded terminal of VSCode.
  • Execute the following command to create a new app. 
    composer create-project laravel/laravel app_name
  • Execute the following command to start the server. 
    php artisan serve

Laravel File structure

Commonly used files in the Laravel framework and their locations are listed below.

Files Locations
models /app/Models
views /resources/views
controllers /app/Http/Controllers
routes /routes/web.php
database /.env

Routes

There are mainly four types of routes in Laravel.

  1. GET
  2. POST
  3. PUT
  4. DELETE

The route structure is shown below. route_type defines the type of the route. URL defines the pointing URL while the action defines the activity to be carried out once the endpoint is hit.

Structure

Route::route_type(url, action);

Routes reside in the /routes/web.php file. Below is an example of a simple GET and a POST route.

GET

Route::get('/', function () { return view('index');});

POST

Route::post('/', function () { return view('index');});

In the action, you can return different things or call a controller function.

Returning a string

Route::get('/', function () { return ‘Hello World’;});

Returning a html string

Route::get('/', function () { return ‘<h1>Hello World</h1>’;});

Returning a .blade view

Route::get('/', function () { return view('index');});

Calling a controller function

Route::get('/shop', [ItemController::class, 'index']);

The following command will return all the routes available in the application:

php artisan route:list

Views

In Laravel .blade files provide the functionality to use PHP code within HTML code sippets.

<h1><?php $var = 'test' ?></h1>

In blade, three main methods reduce code redundancy:

  1. @extends()
  2. @yeild()
  3. @include()

@extends() method is used to import a complete blade file to the calling blade file. @include() method defines locations where externally defined code snippets are placed. @yeild() method defines locations where internally defined code snippets are placed. When defining internal code snippets, it should be defined between @setion() and @endsection blocks.

Controllers

In the Laravel framework Controllers are created under app/Http/Controllers folder. Controllers can be generated using the following artisan command.

php artisan make:controller NameController

A simple controller structure.

class ItemController extends Controller
{
public function index(){
    return view('shop');
}
}

There are few steps when calling a controller function from a route.

  • Include the controller in route 
    use App\Http\Controllers\ItemController;
  • Call the controller method 
    Route::get('/shop', [ItemController::class, 'index']);

Laravel provides the facility to create the routes parallelly when creating controllers. It is done by executing the following command.

php artisan make:controller NameController --resource

There is a special way to call such a controller from the route file. It is defined below.

Structure

Route::resource(name,controller_path);

Example

Route::resource('item','App\Http\Controllers\ItemController');

Setting up database

Database settings are stored in a .env file. As an example, you can connect to a SQL database as follows.

Settings Values  
DB_CONNECTION mysql database connection type
DB_HOST 127.0.0.1 database host url
DB_PORT 3306 database port
DB_DATABASE laravel database name
DB_USERNAME root database username
DB_PASSWORD password database password

Models

In Laravel models can be created by executing the following artisan command. They are created under the app/Models folder.

Structure

php artisan make:model ModelName

Example

php artisan make:model Items

Laravel provides the functionality to create models while adding migrations.

Structure

php artisan make:model ModelName -migration
php artisan make:model ModelName -m

Example

php artisan make:model Items -m

Once we execute the above commands a migration file is generated. A migration file has a up() and a down() function. They are responsible for creating and deleting a table. A simple up() function is shown below.

public function up()
{
Schema::create('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->string('title');
    $table->string('description');
    $table->string('url');
    $table->timestamps();
});
}

Once the migrations are setup you can execute the migrations using the following artisan command.

php artisan migrate

Already created migration can be updated using the table() function as follows.

public function up()
{
Schema::create('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
…
});
Schema::table('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->integer('price');
});
}

To reset the existing migration, you need to execute the following artisan command.

php artisan migrate:reset

Tinker

Tinker is used to interactingwith the database from the terminal. To invoke Tinker execute the following command.

php artisan tinker

Given below is a sample Tinker commands to create and save an Item object.

>>> $item = new App\Models\Item();
=> App\Models\Item {#3346}
>>> $item->title = "Sofa"
=> "Sofa"
>>> $item->description = "Best sofa in the world"
=> "Best sofa in the world"
>>> $item->url = "https://"
=> "https://"
>>> $item->save()

The same Tinker commands can be used within the controller functions as well. The way to create, save, search, update and delete objects using Tinker is given below.

Save

$item = new Items();
$item->title = "Sofa";
$item->save();

Search

$item = Items::where('id', 1)->first();

Update

item = Items::where('id', 1)->first();
$item->title = "Sofa2";
$item->save();

Delete

$item = Items::where('id', 2)->first();
$item->delete();

This blog post explained the basics of the Laravel framework with the related code snippets. I believe that this is a good starting point for someone new to the framework. Wishing you all a happy coding experience.

References

  1. https://laravel.com
  2. https://getbootstrap.com
  3. https://stackoverflow.com
  4. Traversy Media https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC29ju8bIPH5as8OGnQzwJyA