Month April 2017

Laravel : Best Practices

viralsolani 1 Comment

There are Many PHP Frameworks Available And I’ve worked with Zend, CakePHP, CodeIgniter then I picked up Laravel in 2014 and with version 4.2. Trust me, I totally love it now.

Speaking about Laravel, it is simple and comfortable to use, suitable to start with writing the production code, and gives a great boost to a development process. One thing that I love about Laravel is that it’s built using the best practices used in programming available in the current times.

Here are some simple things worth having in mind when developing in Laravel:

  • Try to make use of your .env file to the max you can.
  • Don’t create tables or index directly via PHPMyAdmin or console. Use Database Migration to create table, add/alter any fields, and commit those to Git repository.
  • Don’t insert fake values directly into the database for testing purposes. Create Seeder files or user Model Factory to populate your database.
  • Prefer to use Artisan CLI more than manually creating stuff, it’ll fasten up your productivity.
  • Make sure to boost performance using some artisan commands:
    php artisan route:cache
    php artisan config:cache
    php artisan optimize — force
  • Try not to write closures into your routes.php file, instead move them to your controller.
  • Use Named based Routing.
  • Be careful with the naming conventions when creating custom classes and functions, especially with your Models. Laravel works on a principle such that, for a table named users, it would expect it’s model name to be User.
  • Try to make Validation Requests separately for each request.
  • Although PHP has a class named DateTime to help you when reading, writing, comparing or calculating with date and time. It is recommended that you use the Carbon Library for dealing with dates.
  • Always keep yourself updated with the latest version, Laravel is updating real fast, so keep up the pace.
  • Always use gulp, Laravel Mix for compiling your scripts and sass into minified version for better performance, Laravel did the basic housekeeping for you.

Feel free to add more to the list…