#laracast

Learning PHP and Laravel

Transitioning to a new programming language can have several hurdles associated with it. If you’re going into an entirely different stack, like I have been, you can more than likely bank on needing to set up a completely different environment and finding a new workflow to get into.

There are a few different ways someone could get into their new language or stack – docs, books, or video.  We…

In this article I am going to talk about the advantages of Laravel. In my opinion Laravel is the best framework for a PHP application. Laravel comes with a lot of build in features, like authentication, authorization, artisan, cashier, cache, collections, elixir, encryption and more.

Authentication

Laravel comes with a authentication class, which means that you can build login systems and register forms very easy.

Authorization

In Laravel, 'Authorization' means: "limitation of user permissions". With the authorization feature in Laravel, you can limit the permissions of users very easy. You also can block pages for several users.

Artisan

Artisan is the command-line tool of Laravel. With Artisan, you can build views, models, controllers and many more. Artisan is awesome!

Cashier

With Laravel Cashier/Billing, you can handle coupons, swapping subscriptions, subscription 'quantities", cancellation grace periods and you even can generate PDFs.

Cache

With the build-in caching API, Laravel can handle serveral caching systems, like Memcached and Redis.

Encryption

Laravel comes with an encryption system. You only have to set a 32 character random string. Now you can encrypt messages, errors, exceptions and many more, and you can decrypt them of course.

Errors & Logging

Laravel can handle errors very easy. You can loop through an array with errors, to show them, for example.

Laravel supports Monolog, Monolog is a logging system for developers. Monolog is integrated within Laravel.

Events

With the events functionality, you can handle events. For example, you can send a 'Thank you for registering'-email when a user have made an account.

Filesystem

Laravel supports Flysystem. It is written by a Dutch developer called Frank de Jonge. Flysystem can handle local hosted files, Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud Storage. It is also possible to switch between these services.

Hashing

For hashing, Laravel uses Bcrypt, a secure solution for hashing in PHP, for example. 

Localization

With the localization option, you can locate the country of the user. You can adjust your website to the language of your user.

Mail

Laravel also can handle emails. Laravel uses the SwiftMailer library. It can handle SMTP, Mailgun, Mandrill and Amazon SES.

Pagination

In other frameworks, pagination can be very painful. Laravel makes it a breeze. Laravel can quickly generate an intelligent "range" of links based on the current page, and the generated HTML is compatible with the Bootstrap CSS framework.

Queues

Yes, Laravel supports queues. You can make queues with the unified API. 

Redis

You can use Redis in Laravel, you can store strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets.

Session

Laravel loves sessions, so you can make sessions very easy, you also can cache data.

Envoy Task Runner

In my opinion, this is the coolest feature in Laravel. You can execute tasks with this package. You only have to set the task in your blade template.

Task Scheduling

Cronjobs are headache, so Laravel offer task scheduling, you can schedule tasks very easy. You only have to start the task scheduling from the command line.

Testing

With Laravel, you can test your application in a test environment. It will be set to 'testing' automatically.

Validation

With Laravel, you can validate data very easy. You only have to pass the data through a class which can validate them.

Conclusion

I have installed Sublime Text 3 and have also got the necessary plugins. To do this I follow a tutorial here, http://www.webtipblog.com/12-plugins-make-sublime-text-2-best-code-editor-php-development/. 

Jeffrey Way over at Laracasts finished a group of great videos around the SOLID (Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation and Dependency inversion) principles.

These are some of the most important base patterns you can learn but if you do not come from a programming background it can be confusing. I think his tweet really sums it up:

Dependency Inversion, Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection, IoC Container. It's no wonder why people get so confused. So much jargon!

What I love about Laracasts is Jeff's teaching style. The videos are always just long enough to get the one big idea across and something you can watch and take in over a lunch break.