If you want to start writing some tests for your Laravel project then chances are you will need to write some factories at some point. When I first heard the term factory I had no idea what it meant and what it did, let alone the benefits they can bring to your tests.
Getting started with Laravel factories
Using the unique validation rule in a Laravel Form Request
Sometimes you want to ensure that a field is unique in the database so that someone can’t add the same item twice, such as the title for a post. Laravel provides a couple of handy tools for this, including the Unique validation rule, but there is a bit more configuration required to other validation rules to make the most of its abilities.
Why build a package?
In my day to day job I make use of a lot of packages. This got me thinking it would be good to create a package of my own, so I have decided to build a Laravel package. It’s got a long way to go yet before it’s ready, but I thought I would write down my thoughts about the benefits of building a package while it is still fresh in my mind.
Getting your project seen
Developers love building things and sometimes we want to share these things with other developers to help make their life easier. Creating you project and putting it on GitHub can seem like the difficult part, but letting people know its there and getting them to use it can be even harder.
Rethinking your commute
Like many people, I work in a city, but I live outside the city, meaning I have to commute to work each day. My normal commute takes me over an hour to commute just over 20 miles. That’s pretty shocking when you think of it. My average speed is less than 20 miles per hour. I enjoy my job but, like most people, I really don’t enjoy the commute to and from work.
Latest Posts
Streamlining your code deployment
One of the scariest things as a developer is pushing new code live, hoping it all works as expected and remembering to do all the deployment steps and in the correct order too! But luckily there are some steps you can take to make it easier, which will probably have an unexpected side effect of allowing you to push your code more often.
Creating a simple report in Laravel
Recently I was tasked with creating a report in a Laravel project and I thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way. I’m going to use a shop as an example with an orders table that contains the orders, but these principles should apply to pretty much any report. Firstly I want to get the number of orders for the previous week and then I want to get a count of orders by week and year so I can put this data into a report.
Introducing Mere Blog Theme
A few weeks ago I was reading an article about how everyone should write a blog. Writing can help you demonstrate your knowledge, but also help out others that are trying to learn the same thing. I write a blog on my own website, which was built with Bulma Clean Theme (a Jekyll website theme built with Bulma), but it’s a bit much if you just wanted to create a blog. So I decided to get my notepad out and start sketching some blog theme ideas.