Laravel’s popularity skyrocketed in 2013— by the end of the year, hundreds of developers were flocking to this PHP-based framework. Laravel is a collection of exciting new tools for web development, and it has plenty to offer even advanced programmers.
If you’re considering taking up Laravel because you’re intrigued by its functions and features, then you’re at the right place! We’ll explore some useful tools that will help you start building websites with Laravel.
PHPSTORM
It is the smart IDE that suits the Laravel framework best. PHPStorm run smoothly, it has smart code navigation, allows fast and safe refactoring, easy debugging and testing. Additionally, it is also a good code formatter.
IDE is the crucial parts in developing as it increases the productivity of the developer while saving time at debugging codes. Many developers use PHPStorm for its seamless performance.
GITHUB/BITBUCKET
Both GitHub and BitBucket offer Git services and are quite similar, however, depending on the structure of the project and its requirement one needs to select between the two.
If you are doing freelancer or developing for a small enterprise using the Laravel framework it is advised to use BitBucket. With Bitbucket you can avoid sharing the code repositories.
You can have a limited number of collaborators and the need to have private repositories BitBucket is the best option.
All the plans in BitBucket give unlimited access to the private repository while allowing max 5 collaborators in the free plan.
However, for open source projects, the availability of having unlimited collaborators in GitHub makes it the best choice for the developers working with the Laravel framework.
In Git repository it is easy to pull and push coded while it automatically merges the code with changes and time tracking.
LARAVEL DEBUBAR
For the purpose of debugging the Laravel application, Laraveldebugbar is used. The debugger for Laravel is displayed at the bottom of the browser and provides the debug information. The queries tab of the debugger displays the number of queries that have been fired.
It also displays the route being called, the templates that have been rendered along with the passed parameters in detail. In this debugger, the developer also that the option of adding messages using Façade and will appear under the ‘Message’ tab.
MIGRATION
In Laravel framework migration is the controlled version of the database that allows your team to modify it and also share the application’s database schema.
It is generally paired with the Lrav3l’s schema builder so that the application’s database schema can be easily built. If a teammate of the project needs to add a column to the local database manually and you have faced issues, the database migration will solve the problem.
Also, as a developer team, if you do not wish to share the entire SQL dump with a new developer that has joined the project with migration you can do that.
ENTRUST
In Laravel application entrust is the process of adding role-based permission. There are 4 new tables in Entrust, they are: 1) Role, 2) Role User, 3) Permission and 4) Permission Role. Under these categories, the roles are set up at different levels. There are other models like User, soft deleting, short syntax router filter, route filter and such in Entrust.
LARAVEL BACKUP
This is one of the crucial tools in Laravel for those who provide Laravel Web Development Services. It creates a backup of all the files that are used in the application.
The backup is created with a zip file that contains all the files in the directories that you have specified. It also has all the dump of your database in the project directory.
The best feature of this Laravel Backup tool is that the backup can be stored on any file-system.
USER VERIFICATION
For security reasons, most web applications require users to verification. To do that often email address of the user is required before he/she can use the application. This tool enables the user the conventional methods for sending and verifying the user.
A verification link is sent to the user on the registered email id. No force re-implantation is required for each application.
SOCIALITE
It is the tool in the Laravel framework that enables the most seamless way to handle OAuth authentication. Among the many Laravel features this one allows the user to login via the popular social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, GitHub, and BitBucket.
TINKER
From the command line, one can interact with the project that is using the Laravel framework. With Tinker, one can access all the events and objects. This is an optional add-on that requires to be manually installed for Laravel versions after 5.4.
Confident Laravel
All of us know that we should write tests for our application, but only a few applications has tests. In this course you will find how to break down barriers to testing. Every experienced and ambitious developer write tests. And, of course, we want to lower the time spent on testing our applications.
I recommend you to check Confident Laravel video course. It teaches to write tests for Laravel apps confidently.
Laravel GraphQL
GraphQL is a modern data language. Using GraphQL, the data can be stored in the form of graphs. If you want to use modern graph-based databases like GraphQL with your Laravel web application, you need a tool that facilitates data transfer and modifications. You can use this tool to start up using GraphQL in your Laravel projects.
With all these tools by your side, you can ensure a smooth development journey. The sole aim of development tools is to aid in the faster and effective creation of software. These tools are proper to their words and help in achieving tasks at a pretty rapid rate. Once you start using these development tools, you’ll see why they are essential for Laravel.
Laracon Online
Laracon Online is an annual online conference. It provides the most convenient and affordable way for everyone to get Laracon experience.
Effective PHP
Nuno Maduro’ sWriting Effective PHP video course is very profound. It provides a significant input in developer’s education.
The course teaches you to write code short and simply. It explains the main principles of preventing bugs and much more.
Laravel Core Adventures
Laravel Core Adventures is an excellent video series to gain knowledge and have fun.
Build a Chatbot Course
The Build a chatbot course will teach you to develop, extend and test chatbots and voicebots with PHP.
Laravel Certification
If you have already obtained knowledge and skills in Laravel development, feel free to confirm them with Laravel Certification Program.
Laracasts Forum
Laracasts Forum is a place where developers share their experience and tutorials. Here you can ask for advice and discuss matters.
LaravelIO
LaravelIO is another place to discuss development matters. Allows to find answers to various questions and share your experience.
Larachat Slack Channel
Larachat Slack Workspace is a Slack workspace with different channels dedicated to different topics.
Laravel News
Laravel News is a weekly newsletter about what is trending in the community.
Laravel Podcast
Laravel Podcast is a perfect place to discuss what is trending in the Laravel community.
LaraJobs
LaraJobs is a place to find and post Laravel, PHP and technical jobs.
Laravel Blog
Laravel Blog is official Laravel blog where you can find information about latest Laravel releases, events and Taylor’s (Laravel creator) podcasts.
Laravel Valet
Laravel Valet will easily set up minimalists development environment for Laravel applications. It’s an excellent tool for MacOS users.
The main features:
- Fast (uses roughly 7 MB of RAM)
- Easy to setup
- No need in configuration (just create a folder in the web root)
- Easy to use (provides simple command line tool)
- No need in Vagrant or Docker
- Supports ngrok tunnels
- Allows manual installation of extra services (like Redis or MySQL) via Homebrew
Laravel Valet is an OpenSource software. All the documentation is available on the official Laravel website.
Laravel Homestead
Laravel Homestead is pre-packaged Vagrant box. It provides an excellent development environment. There is no need to install PHP, a web server, and any other server software on your local machine.
The main features:
- Works on any Mac, Windows and Linux systems
- Vagrant boxes are easy to remove and rebuild
- All necessary services are out of box (such as PHP 7.3, Nginx, MySQL, Redis and others)
- Shares a folder between your host and guest machine
Laravel Homestead is also an OpenSource software. Check all the necessary documentation on the official Laravel website.
Mailtrap Blog
Mailtrap is a popular tool for email testing among Laravel users. The team behind it also runs this blog where they explain in detail various aspects of sending emails with this and many other frameworks.
Best Laravel Packages and Extensions
Laravel Passport
Laravel Passport is the simplest possible tool for API authentication. It is a full OAuth2 server implementation that is very easy to use.
The main features:
- Makes OAuth2 server easy to setup and use with simple command line tool
- Comes with all necessary database migrations, controllers and routes
- Includes pre-built Vue.JS components
Laravel Passport is OpenSource. Find all the documentation here. The software is an official OAuth2 implementation solution.
Laravel Scout
Add full-text search to your Eloquent models with Laravel Scout. It is a powerful software to synchronise search indexes with your Eloquent records.
The main features:
- Comes with an Algolia driver, which is a fast solution
- Allows to write custom drivers instead of Algolia and extend Scout with your own search implementations
Laravel Scout is OpenSource. You can check it on Laravel official site.
Laravel Spark
Laravel Spark is a perfect tool for boosting typical SaaS application features development.
The main features:
- Is an excellent tool for building your product
- Lets you focus on bringing value to the user
- Handles user management (authentication, password reset, team billing, two-factor authentication, API, announcements, invoicing, payments and more)
- Is maximally customizable
- Empowers your applications with Vue.JS
- Ships with Stripe.js v3 to ensure the best security for payment and subscription process
- Is built on Bootstrap 4.0
- Supports the latest Laravel versions
- Has a complete localization
- Comes with a clean and intuitive settings dashboard
- Allows you to build up a business logic and see what the end product will look like
Laravel Spark is a paid package that comes with a price $99 per site and $299 per for unlimited sites. Learn more on the Spark official site.
Laravel Nova
Laravel Nova is a Laravel administration panel with great UI and UX which boost up a development.
The main features:
- Provides a full CRUD interface for your Eloquent models
- Is easy to add to your Laravel application, both the new and the existing
- Configures with simple PHP code
- Easily displays custom metrics for your app (with query helpers included)
- Integrates with Laravel authorization policies (even for relationships, lenses, fields and tools)
- Comes with Nova CLI to take full control over new field types implementation and design
- Provides queued actions
- Enables you to add lenses to control the Eloquent query
- Provides CLI generators to scaffold your own custom tools
- Can be integrated with Laravel Scout to get lightning-fast search results
- Includes built-in filters for soft deleted resources
- Supports the latest versions of Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge
Perfectly designed Nova panel comes with price ranging from $99 to $199 per project. Check all the information and documentation here.
Laravel Dusk
If you want to test your application and see how it works from the user’s point of view, try Laravel Dusk. This tool provides automated browser testing with developer-friendly API. Laravel Dusk comes with Chromedriver by default.
The main features:
- Does not require to install JDK or Selenium (but you are free to use any Selenium driver if you wish)
- Is a powerful tool for the web applications using javascript
- Ease the process of testing various clickable elements of your app
- Saves screenshots and browser console outputs of the crushed tests, so you can see what has gone wrong
Check Laravel Dusk on the official website for free.
Laravel Socialite
Laravel Socialite is a package that provides a fluent interface for authentication with OAuth providers, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, GitHub and many others.
The main features:
- Is easy to use
- Contains almost all instance social authentication code you may need
- Has great community support with a lot of providers
Find all the necessary documentation for implementing Laravel Socialite here.
Laravel Echo
Laravel Echo is a JavaScript library. It allows you to subscribe to channels and listen to broadcasted events through WebSoсkets.
The main features:
- Lets you add real time updates to your app
- Provides all types of channels (public, private and presence)
- Ability to broadcast P2P events with whisper method
- Working with popular solutions out of the box, such as: Pusher service or Socket.IO library
Laravel Echo can be installed for free. Check all the documentation here.
Laravel Medialibrary
Laravel Medialibrary package associates all sorts of files with Eloquent models. This package makes working with media objects a breeze.
The main features:
- Allows you to take any media file directly from web via url
- Lets you use a custom directory structure
- Provides an ability to define file conversions. Different image sizes, adjustments, effects, etc.
- Allows for an automatic images optimization
- Enables to make several media collections for one Eloquent model
Laravel Medialibrary gives plenty of opportunities. Take a look at it in documentation.
Laravel Mix
Laravel Mix (previously called Laravel Elixir) is a tool that gives you an almost completely managed front-end build process. It provides a clean and flexible API for defining basic Webpack build steps for your Laravel application.
The main features:
- Provides a wide API that corresponds to almost all your needs
- Works as a wrapper around Webpack and allows to extend it
- Eliminates all the difficulties associated with setting up and running Webpack
- Works with modern javascript tools and frameworks: Vue.JS, React.JS, Preact, TypeScript, Babel, CoffeScript.
- Transpiles and bundles Less, Sass and Stylus into CSS files
- Supports BrowserSync, Hot Reloading, Assets versioning, Source Mapping out of the box
Laravel Mix can be installed for free. Check all the documentation on the official website.
Laravel Cashier
Laravel Cashier is a package that makes the process of subscription billing easier than ever before. While I personally find Stripe PHP library a perfect tool itself, using it directly is more complex. Cashier lets me avoid all the potential difficulties and ease subscription management.
The main features:
- Eases the usage of Stripe subscription billing service
- Is a simple, small to consume and easy to understand codebase
- Gives the Stripe PHP Library a clear, comprehensible and intuitive interface
- Handles coupons, subscription trials, one off charges, generating invoice PDFs and much more
- Meets SCA regulations compliant for Europe
The package is free. Set Laravel Cashier up with the help of documentation here.
Laravel Envoy
Laravel Envoy is a useful task runner with a clean and minimal syntax.
The main features:
- Simplifies the deployment process
- Uses familiar Blade style syntax
- Can be used outside Laravel (and even PHP)
- Uses very simple configuration
- Has a feature of stories that groups a set of tasks under a single and convenient name. Thus, you can group small and focused tasks into large ones. Every story can be run as a regular task
- Allows you to run tasks on multiple servers
- Has an option of parallel execution
- Supports sending notifications to Slack and Discord (you will get notifications after each task execution)
Laravel Envoy is a free tool that can be installed via documentation here.
Laravel Horizon
Laravel Horizon is a queue manager that allows you to completely control your Redis queues.
The main features:
- Allows to monitor queues with clean Web UI
- Gives detailed and comprehensible interface for reviewing and retrying failed jobs
- Allows you to monitor relevant runtime metrics (jobs throughput, retries and failure) in real time
- Outputs the recent retries for the job directly on the failed job detail page
- Stores all your worker configuration in a single, simple configuration file (thus, all the configuration stay in source control)
- Makes it simple for your team to collaborate
- Enables you to use auto-balancing for your queue worker processes
- Has useful notifications
- Lets you tag the jobs (and automatically assigns tags to the most jobs)
Conclusion
laravel PHP Framework is an open source php framework, which can aid developers in creating security-focused web applications. It is released under the MIT license. Laravel is written in PHP language and follows MVC architecture.
Laravel Horizon is free and can be implemented with the help of official documentation.