What Does Laravel Do?

There are many components to Laravel. These components include Route Handling, Security, Migration, Templating, and more. Read this a quick look at what each of these components does. If you are new to Laravel, these components may be difficult to understand at first. Don't be discouraged. Learning is a process, and it takes time. It also takes patience. Learning a new component every day doesn't mean you need to know everything by heart.

Route Handling

You can test your routes using the CLI of Laravel. In this example, we'll pass the URI and request method to route. This will generate the route's response using the var_dump method. Afterwards, we'll see how to use this data to create middleware and namespaces. Route handling in Laravel is a great way to create reusable components and save yourself some time.

You should also consider grouping routes based on their namespace. By doing so, you can keep your code clean and short. You can also use grouping to create different levels for different routes. For example, if you want a user's name to be logged in, you can create different routes for different parts of the site. This way, users can login to a particular part of your site without having to visit multiple pages to access the same information.

The basic route method in Laravel enables users to map URL requests to specific controllers. Once a user has accessed a certain route, the controller method will be called. The code for this method begins with a Route declaration. Then, you can define the controller method by adding the @ symbol to its name. This is an efficient way to handle routing for a single or multiple page application. It also saves you a lot of time by eliminating the need to manually designate every single route.

Security

A large amount of security issues plague Laravel, and there are built-in measures to protect your database from such attacks. One of the most common threats is SQL Injection, a hacking technique wherein a malicious query is inserted into a table's entry field. Once processed, the query would return all of the table's records. This is why you need to protect your database from such vulnerabilities. Fortunately, Laravel comes with built-in support for PDO binding, which can prevent SQL Injection.

In Laravel, security is done up front, so the configuration settings are relatively low-maintenance. The best way to protect your web application is to use the in-built encryption in Laravel. However, this doesn't mean you should build your own encryption, because the default settings are sufficient. Besides, Laravel's security headers are very easy to use and don't require extensive customization.

Migration

Migration in Laravel is like version control for your database. You can make changes to your database schema without touching any SQL code. You can even create database relationships in your PHP code and then migrate them to any database. To learn more about migrations, watch episode 7 of the Laravel 5 fundamental series. You'll learn how to create, modify, and delete migrations, and create tables in any supported database.

You need to create a migration file. This file is stored under the database migrations directory. The migration file name contains a timestamp so Laravel can determine which migrations to apply. When you want to rollback a migration, you can use the rollback command. This will undo the last migration that you applied and recreate the database schema from scratch. However, it is not necessary to use the rollback command to undo a migration.

Templating

Laravel's templating system has some advantages over traditional PHP frameworks. It uses a service container to manage class dependencies, which removes hard-coded courses. The blade template, for instance, uses the echo syntax, which is similar to other frontend frameworks. A view composer defines information that must be loaded by a given page. It also supports service injection to get data directly from the application container.

Laravel also offers a migration system. This tool helps you create and use paths and tables, and connects them together to service the CRUD. Users can easily change table columns, and Laravel's command-line tool, Artisan, makes this a breeze. This tool saves you time by providing dozens of pre-built commands. It eliminates repetitive tasks, such as setting up tables and modifying them.

Components are also part of the templating system. By adding an x-prefixed prefix to the component name, Laravel can find the component. Components can be passed additional HTML attributes to the root element using the $attributes variable. A simple way to merge class attributes is to add "-merge" to the $attributes variable. The same goes for "component-slot": $slot is an optional variable.

Sessions & Data Validation

There are a few different ways to deal with errors when using Laravel's sessions and data validation, and Laravel will automatically handle these for you. The validate method will pass any validation rules you have passed to it to the controller. Generally, your controller will continue executing if validation succeeds. If validation fails, it will automatically flash the $errors variable on the page and redirect the user to their previous location.

Laravel supports the predis package, which contains a session driver. This package can be placed anywhere in your Laravel project. It is important to note that predis uses a flash session key internally, and this key is not stored in the framework itself. Fortunately, Laravel ships with support for several session backends, and you can install them using Composer. You can also generate a migration for Laravel using the session:table Artisan command.

Cache Handling

Laravel's cache handling allows you to store almost any type of data in a local cache. Caches can be used for almost any type of data that is ready to be serialized and deserialized. Eloquent entities and collections are good candidates for caches. You can also implement counters using the Cache.increment() method. Atomic locks are especially helpful when dealing with race conditions.

However, caching is not always necessary. It tends to increase the complexity of your codebase and can cause unpredictable behavior. While Laravel's caching implementation is relatively easy to use, you should be aware of some disadvantages. Cached data can cause hard-to-reproduce bugs and cause unpredictable behavior. This is why you should use cache management sparingly and implement a decorator pattern. In addition to using caches, web applications should also consider object caching to reduce the load on the server and database.

Laravel supports several different caching backends. Among them are Redis and Memcached. By default, Laravel uses the file cache driver, which stores serialized objects in the file system. However, you should use the Memcached or Redis backend when your project is large enough. These methods require PHP v8.2 and Composer v2.2. If you're hosting your application with PlanetScale, you can use their Laravel connection option.

Error Handling & Testing

When writing your own PHP code, you should take note of some basic principles in error handling and testing. PHP errors, also known as fatal errors, cannot be handled through the handleError method, as they will simply halt the rendering of the PHP page. These are commonly known as "white screens of death." Laravel framework provides a shutdown function to catch these errors. If you encounter an error, make sure to investigate your code thoroughly to determine the causes and fix any problems.

PHP error handling can be a herculean task. Laravel's approach isn't perfect, but it's a step in the right direction for the development community. If you're planning to create your own PHP framework, you could do worse than following the lead of the Laravel core team. While it's hard to write robust error-handling code for PHP, you can take a cue from Laravel.

Storage and File Management

Laravel is a popular framework for web development. Its storage and file management features include multiple file formats and support for local storage, SFTP, and cloud storage. If you're planning to use cloud storage, Laravel comes with built-in support for Amazon S3 and Rackspace. Additionally, the storage facade includes examples of what to expect from it, such as how to store data.

The file extension rule validates the file's MIME type. The file extension value is determined by reading the file's content. If the file's MIME type does not match the client-provided MIME type, the framework will try to guess it. The size property corresponds to the file's size in kilobytes. Available constraints include min_width, max_width, width, height, and ratio.