Among all the PHP frameworks, Laravel is ahead of all for many years. Every time there are new changes and developments in the upcoming version of Laravel. Usually, these changes happen every six months which always create a round of discussion among its users which includes some queries, disagreements, and confusion. This time Laravel has moved to a release cycle of 12 months, and they are planning to launch the new one very soon probably in February 2022. The Laravel development company has been as usual excited about the new release and new updates which will definitely ease the life of Laravel developers.
Companies hire a developers as they want some techno-qualified person at their end who can understand all these features and make them useful for the benefit of the company. Before immersing deep into the new features of Laravel 9 let us first understand the concept of Laravel and what it offers to date then only we will be able to figure out the differences they made in their new versions.
LARAVEL: WHAT IT IS?
Laravel is an open-source PHP framework that is actually easy to understand by users. It follows the pattern of model-view-controller design. Here the existing components are reused which is used in developing web applications in a more structured way. Also, when Laravel is used for developing the web page or application, it includes the features of different frameworks of PHP like Lii, Codelgniter, Ruby on Rails, etc. Also, if one is already familiar with PHP then Laravel will be very easy for them to operate. Now, let’s look into some of the advantages which one can get from Laravel:
a)The resources here are more organized and manageable as it includes the interfaces and namespaces.
b)Because of the Laravel framework, the web application becomes more scalable.
c)As Laravel reuses the components of other frameworks, thus, it saves a lot of time.
IMPORTANT FEATURES OF LARAVEL:
So, let’s discuss some features of Laravel which actually make it best among its users and developers. They are listed as below:
a)Composer
This is one tool of the Laravel which includes all the dependencies and users can easily create the project with respect to the framework which is mentioned. This tool also enables the easy installation of third-party libraries.
b)Artisan
It is another very important aspect of the Artisan CLI which includes such a set of commands which helps in assisting the development of web applications. Here the user does not have to navigate through files and folders to create or make any changes in any part of Laravel. It also helps the users to interact directly with your database from the given command using Laravel Tinker.
c)Automated Pagination
Laravel is one such platform that solves the issues of pagination by making it automatic. This resolves one of the biggest issues of pagination.
d)Security and safety
Laravel has several in-built safety measures which protect the web page and the application which are developed on Laravel from any kind of attack from the virus and hackers.
e)Testability
This is one feature of Laravel which helps to conduct the testing via different test cases, and it also helps in maintaining the code as per the requirement.
f)Schema Builder
This is one tool of Laravel which helps to maintain the definitions of database and schema, that too in PHP code. It also helps to maintain the proper track of different changes keeping in thoughts the migration of the respective database.
Some of the other features of Laravel are MVC Architecture, Eloquent ORM (Object-relational Mapper), Libraries and Modular, Template Engine, etc.
As we are now aware of what all features Laravel offers to the users and the developers to date so now we will be able to see what additional features will be offered in its new version which is called Laravel 9.
NEW FEATURES EXPECTED IN LARAVEL 9:
The first thing is that to operate Laravel 9, the minimum requirement is to have PHP 8 with you, and the rest of the new features are mentioned below:
a)The Routes: List design is revamped
This command has been included in the Laravel for a long time but as it holds the details of huge and complex routes, it is very important that the design is quite simple and understandable. This helps to present the hassle even in a much better and sorted way.
b)Making anonymous Stub migration automatic
If one runs the popular migration command on Laravel then the anonymous stub migration becomes automatic. This helps to resolve the GitHub issue due to which the multiple migrations with the same name causes problems when one tries to recreate the whole database from ground level. But this new feature in the updated Laravel helps to avoid these collisions between the same name of migrations. You can refer to the below example:
<?php
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
return new class extends Migration {
/**
* Run the migrations.
*
* @return void
*/
public function up()
{
Schema::table(‘people’, function (Blueprint $table)
{
$table->string(‘first_name’)->nullable();
});
}
};
c)Interface revamped for the new query builder
The new version of Laravel will showcase the new interface of the new query builder. In Laravel 9, type hinting is really trustworthy for static analysis, refactoring, code completion in their IDEs. This version added two new things-Illuminate\Contracts\Database\QueryBuilder interfaces and Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Concerns\DecoratesQueryBuilder.Below is an example,
<?php
return Model::query()
->whereNotExists(function($query) {
// $query is a Query\Builder
})
->whereHas(‘relation’, function($query) {
// $query is an Eloquent\Builder
})
->with(‘relation’, function($query) {
// $query is an Eloquent\Relation
});
d)PHP 8 string purposes
The new functions include the following,
str_contains(), str_starts_with(), and str_ends_with() internally in the \Illuminate\Support\Str class
It has brought lots of features like bug fixation, different features, and a lot of new changes.
e)SwiftMailer to SymphonyMailer
In the previous version of Laravel, it utilized SwiftMailer to send the outgoing mail. Although this library is no longer maintained as it has been taken over by Symphony Mailer. One should very carefully review the upgrade guide which helps the developer to ensure compatibility with the SymphonyMailer.
f)Better version of Eloquent Mutators/Accessors
The updated version of Laravel offers the better version of Eloquent accessors and Mutators. Earlier the only way to describe the accessors and mutators by defining prefixed methods as below:
public function getNameAttribute($value)
{
return strtoupper($value);
}
public function setNameAttribute($value)
{
$this->attributes[‘name’] = $value;
}
But in the latest version of the Laravel, one can describe the mutators and accessors by using the single, non-prefixed method using return-type or type hinting as below,
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;
2
3public function name(): Attribute
4{
5 return new Attribute(
6 get: fn ($value) => strtoupper($value),
7 set: fn ($value) => $value,
8 );
9}
This new approach also defines the cache object value which is returned back by the attribute like the custom cast classes.
use App\Support\Address;
2use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Casts\Attribute;
3
4public function address(): Attribute
5{
6 return new Attribute(
7 get: fn ($value, $attributes) => new Address(
8 $attributes[‘address_line_one’],
9 $attributes[‘address_line_two’],
10 ),
11 set: fn (Address $value) => [
12 ‘address_line_one’ => $value->lineOne,
13 ‘address_line_two’ => $value->lineTwo,
14 ],
15 );
16}
CONCLUSION:
The above points showcase how the new version of Laravel is going to make the life of developers and programmers easier. Also, how the user will be able to enjoy the new interfaces, so just wait for the launch and enjoy the rest.
