Laravel 4 – Beginner’s notes

You might ask: What is Laravel (and Laravel 4)? In short, it is the PHP frameworks for web artisans. This contains notes for beginners.

• We can generate tables for application by utilizing the migration feature with artisan. For example, in order to setup a user table, we use parameters –table and –create:

  php artisan migrate:install
  php artisan migrate:make create_users_table --table=users --create

  . We can find the php file artisan has created under /app/database/migrations, and can adjust this file to generate needed fields. We can then tell artisan to create users table:

  php artisan migrate

• To insert default item, we create a seeder class in /app/database/seeds/UserTableSeeder.php, and then declare a call to UserTableSeeder in the DatabaseSeeder:

  $this->call('UserTableSeeder');

  . Finally, we do this db insertion by using artisan:

  php artisan db:seed

• In router, we can use Route::get and Route::post to accept get/post data (e.g.

  Route::post('login', 'AuthController@postLogin');

  ), and when defining actions in controller, we shoud use the prefix post and get so that they can be handled automatically if we use Route::controller.

• Laravel provides a Validator we can use to specify some rules to check. If the validator fails, we can pass the $validator directly to our view to show the error message. Depending on the result of validation and authentication we redirect to the according page with success- or error-messages. The withInput function allows us to pass the last inputs (except password) to the new form. E.g.

  return Redirect::to('login')->withErrors($validator)->withInput(Input::except('password'));

• When using some Laravel built-in features, we might face the error

  mcrypt_encrypt(): Size of key is too large for this algorithm

  . This is caused by the key inputted manually is too long. It is recommended to use

  php artisan key:generate

  to generate the application key.

• In order to add a new bundle to the current project, we need to add it to the requires section of the composer.json file (e.g.

  "require": {
  		"laravel/framework": "4.0.*",
                  "michelf/php-markdown": "1.3"
  	},

  , and then update the project with composer:

  composer update

• It is suggested to prepare needed migration and seeding scripts so that when deploying to production, we just need to do artisan migrate and artisan db:seed.
• In order to order by multiple columns, use multiple orderBy:

  Page::orderBy('field_1', 'DESC')->orderBy('field_2', 'DESC')->paginate(20)

• For pagination, do not do query manually. Instead, should use Laravel built-in pagination control which is compatible with twitter-bootstrap.
• In order to pass a data from database to blade Form::select element, we should use lists method with the according model. E.g.

      //-- In the controller
      public function getIndex()
      {
          return View::make('users/index')
                  ->with('other_users', Country::where('id','<>',1)->where('id','<>',10)->lists('name','id'));
      }
  
      {{-- In the blade view --}}
      {{ Form::select('id_country',
              array(
                  'Popular'   => array(
                      '0'     => 'All users',
                      '1'     => 'User 1',
                      '10'    => 'User 10'
                  ),
                  'Other users'   => $other_users
              ),
              '',
              array('style' => 'width:100%;')
      ) }}

• In order to set active element based on the page URI (for example, active menu for a specific controller), use Request:is method:

  <li{{ Request::is( 'pages*') ? ' class="active"' : '' }}>

• In order to create good-looking form with Twitter Bootstrap, use https://bootsnipp.com/forms
• When do create a new model from user data, remember to set $fillable information so that these fields can be used for mass data filling:

  class Campaign extends Eloquent {
      protected $fillable = array('name', 'country');
  }

• When a form validation fails, remember to forward old input to the form so that user-inputted data is not lost. For example:

  //-- In controller
  return Redirect::to('login')->withErrors($validator)->withInput(Input::except('password'));
  
  //-- In blade template
  {{ Form::text('username', Input::old('username')) }}