Laravel Development Services: Hidden Things Uncovered

Last Updated on February 3, 2021

Quick Summary: The software development industry is becoming more integral to nearly every sector of the world. Numbers of frameworks and programming languages are available, so it is not easy to choose an ideal web development framework to build high-performing applications. Laravel being a renowned open-source framework, provides plenty of excellent opportunities and features to develop complex apps faster. So, it is essential to know about the latest Laravel development trends that you should follow to improve your Laravel application development. In this blog post, I will cover the hidden features of Laravel development, the latest trends about Laravel, the future of Laravel in the coming years, and much more.

So, let’s get started!

Introduction

In this quickly evolving technological sector, Laravel is gaining continuous popularity in building unique web applications from the last few years. Laravel offers elegant features that cover all aspects of everyday use cases, and you can enjoy the creative experience to be truly fulfilling.

Laravel is the best PHP framework for developing robust web applications. Some of you may not be aware of the hidden practices of Laravel development services. This is why I am writing this blog post to help you discover Laravel best practices to improve Laravel application performance.

Business Development

PHP web frameworks are the most powerful tools for building web applications that offer tremendous importance to the development process using the MVC architecture pattern. It keeps its Cachet as the best PHP frameworks because of its functionality, clarity, and simplicity. It is possible because of a caching system in Laravel that stores numerous cached items to develop applications promptly.

Laravel can personalize web applications with flawless syntax and best coding practices for organizations around the globe. It reduces the development time and also helps in higher coding efficiency.

Security

Laravel offers plenty of security features that allow you to reduce the Laravel vulnerabilities in the application. Laravel is a web application framework that integrates a valid token from a form or an AJAX call.

Laravel Development Trends 2020

Listed are a few Laravel trends that is widely adopted and implemented by the businesses as well as entrepreneurs around the world.

PHP Development Outsourcing

PHP development outsourcing has emerged among the top A-list programming languages that have been leading the development sector. There are 90% chances that the site, which is good looking today is developed using PHP. Laravel development services offer robust features, leveraging Windows, Unix, and Linux to interface with MySQL and Apache.

Laravel Library

Laravel aims to take you out from the tedious routine like authentication, caching, sessions, and routing. It makes the development environment faster for you and creates a pleasing one without sacrificing application functionality.

MVC Support

Laravel follows the MVC software architecture, which supports rapid and parallel development. MVC architecture divides your web application into various components and manages the entire development process with improved presentation and better functionality.

MVC allows you to work on the view while the other can simultaneously work on the controller to create the application’s business logic.

Hashed Text

With hashing, a string of characters can be translated into a key (readable format) that represents the original string. All your private information and passwords are stored in understandable text form.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is the trendiest thing in the Laravel community. A hardware platform like Arduino is more flexible and language agnostic, supporting PHP and matches with other hardware. Plenty of companies have recognized the strength Laravel is coming up with the best IoT solutions.

Laracasts

Laracasts is the best platform to learn how to develop websites using Laravel from scratch. The large community of Laracasts can help you to solve all queries when something goes wrong.

Laravel Development Tools and Resources

Let’s have a look at top tools and resources of Laravel development. It will help you reduce your budge for Laravel development.

Learning Laravel

Using Laravel, you can easily become an expert in the framework and tools you’re going to use to develop web applications. Let me make you aware of some educational platforms and tool:

Laracasts

Laracasts is a platform for educational resources that will be beneficial to you as it offers excellent screencasts about PHP in general, Databases, and much more.

Laravel Community

Laravel is an excellent framework for building web applications that are closely related to its community. The Laravel community manages the code and points to things that need maintenance.

Laracasts Forum

Laracasts Forum is the best platform for sharing your experiences and tutorials with others that you gained while developing your web application. You can also ask for advice when required.

LaravelIO

LaravelIO is another platform to share your insights and discuss development matters.

Laravel Ecosystem

The Laravel ecosystem offers numerous opportunities, powerful Laravel hidden features like, encryption, BCrypt, and much more.

Laravel is a powerful yet robust MVC framework created for developing PHP web applications.

Helpful Services in Laravel

Laravel Vapor

Laravel Vapor is powered by AWS Lambda to manage the infrastructure. It is a serverless deployment platform for your Laravel application.

Features:

• It is CI friendly
• Allows custom applications domain
• Comes with a pretty CLI tool
• DNS management
• Secret management
• Certificate management
• Environment variable
• Auto-scaling web for Laravel
• Database management
• Redis cache management

Laravel Forge

Laravel Forge is a tool for configuring your web application to automate the deployment using the PHP server.

Features:

• Secure By Default
• Database backups
• Installs SSL certificates within seconds
• Allows you to restart each service
• Easily sets up necessary SSH keys
• Provides an automatic setup
• Free SSL Certificates

Laravel Shift

Laravel Shift is an automated and human service for upgrading and improving your Laravel application.

Features:

• Saves your time
• Keeps only one original copy of your code
• Upgrades Laravel versions instantly
• Provides the fastest way to upgrade any Laravel version
• Suits best with Bitbucket, Gitlab, and GitHub projects

Hidden Laravel Eloquent Features

1. Get original attributes

To execute the get original attributes, simply call getOriginal() and you’re done. Here is it:

$user = App\User::first();

$user->name;                   //John$user->name = "John";        
//John$user->getOriginal('name');    //John
$user->getOriginal();          //Original $user record

2. Check if the Model changed

Check the attribute using isDirty() method and it will look like:

$user = App\User::first();
$user->isDirty();          //false$user->name = "John";
$user->isDirty();          //true

Check if any particular attribute is changed or not.

$user->isDirty('name');    //true
$user->isDirty('age');     //false

3. Get changed attributes

Now, retrieve the modified attributes using getChanges().

$user->getChanges()//[
    "name" => "Peter",
 ]

4. Custom deleted_at column

Laravel also handles soft deletes using the delete_at column like:

class User extends Model
{
   use SoftDeletes;
     const DELETED_AT = 'is_deleted';
}
Or by defining an accessor.
class User extends Model
{
   use SoftDeletes;

   public function getDeletedAtColumn()
   {
       return 'is_deleted';
   }
}

5. Save models and relationships

Save the corresponding relationships and all the models of your application using the push() method.

class User extends Model
{
   public function phone()
   {
       return $this->hasOne('App\Phone');
   }
}$user = User::first();
$user->name = "John";$user->phone->number = '1010101010';$user->push(); 

6. Reload fresh model

Using the fresh() method, reload a fresh model from the database.

$user = App\User::first();
$user->name;               // John// user record get updated by another thread. eg: 'name' changed to // John.$updatedUser = $user->fresh();
$updatedUser->name;       // John$user->name;              // John

7. Reload existing model

Reload the existing model from the database using refresh().

$user = App\User::first();
$user->name;               // John// user record get updated by another thread. eg: 'name' changed to // John.$user->refresh();
$user->name;              // Peter

8. Check if models are the same

check if both the models have the same ID using is().

$user = App\User::find(1);
$sameUser = App\User::find(1);
$diffUser = App\User::find(2);$user->is($sameUser);       // true
$user->is($diffUser);       // false

9. Clone a model

Clone the database’s model using replicate() method.

$user = App\User::find(1);
$newUser = $user->replicate();$newUser->save();

10. Specify attributes in find() method

Using find() method, you can specify the attributes as your second argument.

$user = App\User::find(1, ['name', 'age']);$user = App\User::findOrFail(1, ['name', 'age']);

Top 20 Laravel People to Follow Online

1. Taylor Otwell

Taylor Otwell is the Founder at Laravel. He created the best and massively popular web development platform called Laravel. He started building his career around Laravel and made it a significant part of the development industry.

Twitter: @taylorotwell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-otwell-23794592

2. Jeffrey Way

Jeffrey Way is the Founder of Laracasts and delivers something that you can immediately pick up and understand!

Twitter: @jeffrey_way
Podcast: The Laracasts Snippet

3. Matt Stauffer

Matt Stauffer is a Laravel blogger and co-host of Laravel Podcast. Additionally, he is a programmer and technical director at Tighten.

Twitter: @stauffermatt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattstauffer

4. Eric L. Barnes

Eric L. Barnes is the Creator of the Laravel News blog and comes up with the framework’s latest information.

Twitter: @ericlbarnes
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-barnes-19711167

5. Dayle Rees

Daylee Rees has written famous books on Laravel such as “Code Happy,” “Code Bright,” and “Code Smart.”

Twitter: @daylerees
Personal website: http://daylerees.com/

6. Mahmoud Zalt

Mahmoud Zalt is the Creator of LaraDock, and additionally, he is a senior web developer, Docker Enthusiast, and Open-source Advocate.

Twitter: @Mahmoud_Zalt
Personal blog: http://www.zalt.me/

7. Prosper Otemuyiwa

Prosper Otemuyiwa is the Creator of the Laravel Hackathon Starter Package and admires what Prosper does for Nigeria’s Laravel community.

Twitter: @unicodeveloper
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prosperotemuyiwa

8. Shawn McCool:

Shawn McCool is the host of Dev Discussions Podcast and the organizer of Laracon.EU.

Twitter: @ShawnMcCool
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnmccool

9. Freek Van der Herten

Freek Van der Herten is an active Laravel blogger at Murze.be and a partner at Spatie.

Twitter: @freekmurze
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murze

10. Adam Wathan

Adam Wathan is the host of Full Stack Radio podcast and an excellent Laravel developer. He is a blogger and author of books written on Laravel.

Twitter: @adamwathan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wathan-9418984a

11. Marcel Pociot

Marcel Pociot is a Creator of Chrome extension Laravel Testtools and a Laravel Evangelist.

Twitter: @marcelpociot
Personal blog: http://www.marcelpociot.de/

12. Dries Vints

Dries Vintis is the organizer of the PHP Antwerp meetup and maintainer of the Laravel Community.

Twitter: @driesvints
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/driesvints

13. Graham Campbell

Graham is the Creator of StyleCI; he also contributed to the various packages of Laravel core.

Twitter: @GrahamJCampbell
Personal website: https://gjcampbell.co.uk/

14. Barry van den Heuvel

Barry van den Heuvel is the Creator of Laravel packages. He also created the famous Laravel IDE Helper and Laravel Debugbar.

Twitter: @barryvdh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryvdheuvel

15. Chris Fidao

Chris Fidao is the Creator of Servers for Hackers. He is an active Twitter user and wrote a book named Implementing Laravel with in-depth knowledge about how to implement and use Laravel in easy and understandable language.

Twitter: @fideloper
Personal blog: http://fideloper.com/

16. Paul Redmond

Paul Redmond wrote famous books about Laravel, such as Lumen programming guide and Docker for PHP Developers. He recently contributed to Laravel News.

Twitter: @paulredmond

17. Jason McCreary

Jason McCreary is the Creator of the latest upgrade service of Laravel Shift. He is an author of a course Getting Git.

Twitter: @gonedark
Personal blog: https://jason.pureconcepts.net/

18. Michael Dyrynda

Michael Dyrynda is the co-host of Laravel News Podcast. He is the co-organizer of PHP Adelaide and an active Laravel blogger.

Twitter: @michaeldyrynda
Personal blog: https://dyrynda.com.au/

19. Nuno Maduro

Nuno Maduro is the Creator of Laravel zero and an active Twitter user.

Twitter: @enunomaduro

20. Mohamed Said

Mohamed recently awarded official employee no.1 at Laravel and is enthusiastic about blogging and internals of the framework.

Twitter: @themsaid
Personal blog: https://themsaid.com/

Security of laravel

Laravel Authentication System

The Laravel authentication features are built into the application during the development process; you just need to set up controllers, models, and the database. Laravel offers a robust user authentication process, which is associated with boilerplate code available in the scaffolding.

Reduce Laravel Vulnerabilities From CSRF

Laravel typically uses CSRF tokens for protection against fake requests. When any request is conjured, Laravel compares the request token in the user’s session, and if it doesn’t match, the request is classified as invalid, and the action is ended right there.

If you are manually creating forms using HTML using Blade templates then don’t forget to pass the CSRF token as shown below:

< form name="test" >
{!! csrf_field() !!}
< !-- Other inputs can come here→
< /form >

Protection against XSS

Whenever you receive an XSS attack, the attacker enters JavaScript into your website. If any new visitor tries to access that page of the form, it will harm it.

Let’s create a scenario where a user with malicious intent enters the JavaScript code:

< script >alert(“You are hacked”)< /script >

If there is no XSS protection, then the Laravel vulnerabilities will gradually increase and execute the page reloads every time.

The code with escape tags is shown as HTML like:

< script >alert(“You are hacked”)< /script >

SQL Injection

The most important feature of Laravel Eloquent ORM uses PDO binding to help you from SQL injection and makes sure that clients cannot edit or modify the SQL queries’ intent.

Here is the example where you’re collecting a user’s email address from the database:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ‘[email protected]’ or 1=1

In the previous example, 1=1 is a simple logical expression that is always true. Now, imagine where the query is directly modified to the command instead of the email address.

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ‘[email protected]; drop table users;

There are some more options available for talking to databases, but Eloquent is the most popular and suitable option to prevent SQL injection attacks caused by malicious SQL queries.

Laravel Security Packages:

To enhance the security of your application, Laravel offers several packages such as:

• Laravel Security Component
• Laravel Security
• Laravel-ACL

The second update of 2020

Laravel 8 is out now with more advanced features, including Laravel Jetstream, model factory classes, migration squashing, time testing helpers, dynamic blade components, etc. Let’s talk about the latest features of Laravel 8 in detail:

Laravel Jetstream

Laravel Jetstream is a dominant feature of Laravel that can be executed when you’re starting a new project. It provides the beginning point for your project and introduces registration, login, two-factor authentication, and team management. The actual Laravel UI scaffolding is now improved in Laravel 8.

Models Directory

Laravel 8’s application structure consists of an ‘app/Model’ directory. All generator commands consider models exist in ‘app/Models;’ nevertheless, if this directory is not located, then the framework will, by default, assume that the application retains the model within the ‘app/’ folder.

Model Factory Classes

In Laravel 8, the eloquent model factories are based on class with improved support for relationships between factories.

Here is the syntax for creating records using the latest model factories:

use App\Models\User; 
User::factory()->count(50)->create(); 
// using a model state "suspended" defined within the factory class User::factory()->count(5)->suspended()->create(); 

Migration Squashing

Squashing multiple migration files into a single SQL file is Migration squashing. The squashed migration files will be executed first and the remaining files will not be the part of the squashed schema file. Migration squashing improves the performance of running tests and decreases the migration file bloat.

Improved Rate Limiting

With the latest version of Laravel, there is enhanced limiting functionality while supporting backward compatibility that offers more flexibility.

use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit; use Illuminate\Support\Facades\RateLimiter; 
RateLimiter::for('global', function (Request $request) { 
return Limit::perMinute(1000); }); 

Time Testing Helpers

You have enjoyed the control over time modification feature in Laravel by implementing the Carbon PHP library. With the latest version of Laravel, you’re one step closer to provide the convenient test helpers for manipulating the time within tests:

// Travel into the future...
 $this->travel(5)->milliseconds(); 
$this->travel(5)->seconds(); 
$this->travel(5)->minutes(); 
$this->travel(5)->hours(); 
$this->travel(5)->days();
 $this->travel(5)->weeks(); 
$this->travel(5)->years(); 
// Travel into the past... 
$this->travel(-5)->hours(); 

// Travel to an exact time... 
$this->travelTo(now()->subHours(6));

// Return back to the present time... 
$this->travelBack(); 

Dynamic Blade Components

Assume that you want to render a blade component dynamically at the runtime. To render the component, Laravel 8 provides the

< x-dynamic-component/ >: 
< x-dynamic-component :component="$componentName" class="mt-4" / > 

Top 10 successful websites Built Using Laravel

Let’s have a look at renowned examples of Laravel websites. This will make you understand why Laravel is so popular amongst entrepreneurs.

1. Deltanet Travel

Deltanet is a destination management and a considerable example of Laravel website where you can understand the importance of hassle-free UI UX experience. Laravel provides high-security, including protection against CSRF and SQL injections.

2. MyRank

MyRank is an online learning platform that makes use of the Laravel versatility and also combines the features to blend the functionality with aesthetic quality.

3. Neighborhood Lender

Neighborhood Lender is a website for loans having plenty of functionality that Laravel offers. It uses Laravel to simplify getting home loans and offers caching options so that you are not required to send information every time.

4. World Walking

World walking is another Laravel site example that motivates people to walk more who don’t like to walk. Using Laravel, the website offers various powerful features to track your steps and tell you if you need any walking improvements. You will be awarded and get rewards on the successful completion of a target.

5. Laravel Snippets

Laravel Snippets is a website where you can share snippets with the community.

6. LaravelIO

The community mainly uses LaravelIO for Laravel developers. The forum platform is also built using the same platform. Laravel helps the community perform most of the tasks such as authentication, authorization, creating sessions, routing, and caching.

7. Larasocial

Larasocial is an open-source platform for social networking developed using Laravel because it allows you to send requests, accept requests, and communication between users (chatting). You can also integrate
for extending immediate contact with a rich code foundation.

8. FusionInvoice

If you are a freelancer, this website will be beneficial to you. FusionInvoice is developed using Laravel that keeps track of monetary situations within your business and manages it. Through Laravel, users can host their own servers by paying a one-time charge or choose monthly payments.

9. Cachet

Cachet is developed on the Laravel platform that makes the communication better when the system outages to the customers and stakeholders. Adding the Laravel features to it allows you to solve your websites’ existing issues and services are performing optimally and down. Sometimes it may happen that your website isn’t performing well, slowing down, not functioning correctly. If these ever happened with you, you can use Cachet, which will help you solve problems by enabling beautiful status pages having the list of which services are working correctly and which aren’t.

10. Orchestra Platform

Orchestra Platform provides great deployment speed by handling user management and Laravel extensions.

Future of Laravel App Development Services

Almost more than 60% of websites are created using the PHP web programming language. Laravel web application development services are gaining continuous popularity because of its comprehensive syntax and fantastic functionality to develop enterprise applications.

Why is Laravel Web Application Development Services So Popular?

It is a fact that Laravel offers varied features that makes the development process easier and flawless for making high-performing web applications and indicates that the future of Laravel in the coming years is quite promising. With Laravel development, you can come up with the best creative solutions and develop scalable and adaptable web applications at cost-effective prices. So, Laravel development’s future is the leading position amongst all web application frameworks in 2020 is uninhabited and augmented growth.

Laravel development services allow you to work on the core expertise with the flexibility that leads to business growth and meets the growing demand and usage.

Here are some great features of Laravel development services that makes the framework prevalent in the developer community:

• Inversion of IoC is one of the most practical features of the Laravel framework.
• Laravel allows you to build authenticate features of the application smoothly that needs to be run to activate full-fledged authentication modules.
• Laravel cache helps to retrieve user-related data quickly from all the view routes.
• Laravel routing can create websites that are search-engine friendly.
• Laravel offers various modules that help you to create complex and large applications smoothly.
• Artisan features of Laravel allow you to run iterative tasks.
• You can develop high-secure web applications using Laravel.

Final Thoughts

There is a wide range of features offered by the Laravel framework, and there are some additional factors like deployment, testing, third-party integrations, and much to take into consideration. Hundreds of websites are built using the Laravel framework, and it is one of the fastest-growing frameworks globally compared to other similar frameworks. It provides out-of-the-box configuration for the Authorization and Authentication system.

The future of Laravel frameworks in the coming years is bright because of the robust features of Laravel development services. Many top companies are using the Laravel framework for developing powerful web applications, and more than 60% of developers are willing to use Laravel in the future. So, if you want to be one of them, then hire laravel developer from a renowned Laravel development company to cut down development cost, complexity, and develop a successful product following your custom business requirements.

So, what are you waiting for? Go and start your project today! 😊

Kiran Bhatt View all post

Kiran is a content associate at Bacancy Technology. Kiran Bhatt has an astounding affinity for reading and writing about trending technologies that allow her to be creative. She is a social aficionado. When Kiran is not scrolling down her Instagram feed, she can be found reading novels of Jhumpa Lahiri, Stephenie Meyer, Harper Lee and more.