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.
Using Laravel Eloquent's Many to Many Relationship
The more time you spend reading the Laravel docs, the more things you will find that will save you time and effort. I have been using Laravel for many years but this week I discovered I had been using the many to many relationship in a sub optimal way, and by that I mean I avoided it at all costs.
Latest Posts
Building a VS Code Extension for Gutenberg blocks
I have been tasked with building a new website using WordPress. The last time I used WordPress was a few years ago and involved using Advanced Custom Fields to build custom pages and layouts. Things have changed a lot over the years and now there is the built in Gutenberg editor, which uses blocks to create a custom layout and add content. The trouble was, there didn’t seem to be great support in Visual Studio Code for the blocks, as they use HTML comments.
Using Pest to test Laravel Livewire validation rules
Last year I wrote a post about testing Laravel Livewire validation rules with PHP Unit. This post uses the same techniques as that post, but shows how to transfer it to Pest instead of PHP Unit.
Mocking window.location in Jest
Recently I had to write some tests for a piece of JavaScript code that used window.location. This left me trying to figure out how to mock the window.location so that I could pass in dummy data and ensure that the data I got back was what was expected. Here was how I managed to solve the issue.
