A Week with Laravel 5: What’s New

With a PHP project we have just started, we decided to begin development with the Laravel 5 framework – even before it’s been released. The framework is due to be released this month (Jan 2015) and instead of starting with Laravel 4 and attempting to migrate upwards, it seems natural to begin with the newest version even though it’s features might change slightly pre-release.

Being comfortable developing with both PHP and Laravel 4, some of the changes with version 5 seemed quite major. Here’s a list of changes which I’ve come across after working with Laravel 5 for just 1 week, my first week. This isn’t a changelog of each feature (here is a changelog), so there will be new bits missing and opinion will creep into a few statements.

Folder Structure#

This has to be the first thing we talk about. As soon as you pull down Laravel 5 the new folder structure hits you square in the jaw. It took me a while to work out where everything went.

Initial thoughts:

• I would have liked a Models folder as standard instead of leaving the in the app folder.
• I couldn’t find the controllers folder.
• Don’t initially understand the difference between providers and services.
• Don’t undertand the difference between console and command.

Thoughts after a week:

• I moved the models into a folder and namespaced them which kept me happy.
• I actually really like controllers being under the http folder.
• Really liked resources/assets being outside of public.

Requests#

With Laravel 4, you have a form in your Blade template which will post data to your controller. Your controller then validates the data and acts accordingly. With Laravel 5 however, this process is slightly different. Your form will still post to a controller but the first parameter in the method is a Request class. This Request class validates your data, before it hits your controller – this means that your method in the controller does one thing, not two.

Initial thoughts:

• How do I get it to return errors to the form? (fyi, it does it by default).

Thoughts after a week:

• Excellent – clean controllers, super validation, robust code.

Namespacing#

I would often employ namespacing on Laravel 4 anyway, so having this setup by default was a nice change. It means that your models, controllers and classes are all separated into different sections – so can have a class with the same name, if needs be. Once you’ve set up your app, you can run php artisan app:name MyAppName to setup your global namespace throughout.

Initial thoughts:

• Yes! Excellent News

Thoughts after a week:

• So many use statements at the top of your classes and long class statements in your views.
• Why do I keep forgetting the backslash () from the start of the frameworks classes, e.g. \Auth::user().

Elixir/Gulp#

Laravel 5 now comes with elixir, a task-runner for front-end development, by default. This will take any less/sass files you have in your resources folder and compile them into a single minified css file in the public folder. Front-end developers have been doing this for a while – what’s special is that it’s there be default.

Initial thoughts:

• Another thing to learn – sigh (I usually use grunt).
• What the heck’s Elixir?

Thoughts after a week:

• Really easy to setup.
• Couldn’t quite get it working right with my JavaScript and .scriptsIn().

Environment Variables#

New install of Laravel, I went straight to the database config file. I’m used to this as lots of frameworks work in this way. Environment variables are quite a bit cleaner though – and safer as the .env file shouldn’t be commited to your repository.

Initial thoughts:

• Very pleased there’s a .env.example file as standard.

Thoughts after a week:

• Why don’t most frameworks work this way?

Less static methods#

Laravel has always had a reputation for using lots of static methods and simple class names. For example Redirect::back() and View::make(). Now, the Laravel 5 way of doing these is to use the simple functions, redirect()->back() and view(''). I actually really like static methods, so I was a little disappointed, until I worked with what they’ve become – and I quite like these little functions.

Initial thoughts:

• Awww, no static methods
• Everything’s changed!
• Who moved my cheese.

Thoughts after a week:

• They’re basically the same, I’m used to them now.
• For some reason I think they look a little ameatur-ish without a class.

Artisan Serve#

This is a controversial one… I was a user of the php artisan serve command. Developing on linux anyway, I found it a similar environment to using a vagrant box, with less precious resources being sucked away by having a virtual operating system running.

Edit 20th Jan ’14: Serve has been added back in.

Initial thoughts:

• Do I really have to use vagrant now?
• Like really?

Thoughts after a week:

• No, I just started using php -S localhost:8000 -t public/ instead.

Have you used Laravel 5 yet? Let us know in the comments.