Freek Van der Herten's blog on PHP, Laravel and JavaScript

Oh Dear is the all-in-one monitoring tool for your entire website. We monitor uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks and more. You'll get a notifications for us when something's wrong. All that paired with a developer friendly API and kick-ass documentation. O, and you'll also be able to create a public status page under a minute. Start monitoring using our free trial now.

Store strongly typed settings in a Laravel app

Original – Nov 9th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read

We have released a new package, called spatie/laravel-settings, that allows you to strongly type settings in a Laravel app. In this blog post, I'd like to introduce the package to you.

Encrypting and signing data using private/public keys in PHP

Original – Nov 9th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read

For a project, I needed to make sure that a particular piece of data actually came from a specific source. There are already many packages that allow you to do this, but most are not fun or easy to use. That's why we created a new package called spatie/crypto to do this.

Stay up to date with all things Laravel, PHP, and JavaScript.

You can follow me on these platforms:

On all these platforms, regularly share programming tips, and what I myself have learned in ongoing projects.

Every month I send out a newsletter containing lots of interesting stuff for the modern PHP developer.

Expect quick tips & tricks, interesting tutorials, opinions and packages. Because I work with Laravel every day there is an emphasis on that framework.

Rest assured that I will only use your email address to send you the newsletter and will not use it for any other purposes.

Learn all new PHP 8 features by watching this free video course

Original – Nov 6th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Together with my colleague Brent, I've created Front Line PHP, a book and video course on building modern applications with PHP 8. You can purchase the book here.

The video course is entirely free. Head over to our website to see videos on all new major PHP 8 features.

Apply Filters Conditionally In Laravel With when()

Link – Nov 6th 2020 – naxon.dev - submitted by Daniel Naxon

Ever needed to apply filters on a query conditionally, only when the user actually applies them? Laravel query builder's method when got you covered.

HTML Forms: Preventing Double Form Submissions

Link – Nov 4th 2020 – www.bram.us

Here's how Bram Van Damme prevents double form submissions

spatie/once v3 has been released, now uses a PHP 8 WeakMap

Original – Nov 3rd 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read

I've just released a new major version of the spatie/once package. This version uses the WeakMap class which is introduced in PHP 8. In this short post I'd like explain why this change was made.

Casual Conversation Call #2 with Christoph Rumpel

Original – Nov 2nd 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Here's the recording of a casual conversation between Christoph Rumpel and me we had last week.

The best PRs we got in October

Original – Nov 2nd 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read

At Spatie, we want to stimulate contributing to our open source stuff. That's why we said that we'd give away some of our paid products for free to authors of the best PRs we got in October. In a way, it's our own small version of Hacktoberfest.

In this blog post, I'd like to announce the winners.

The problems with traditional form uploads

Original – Oct 30th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

When handling uploads, a traditional input type of file has some downsides. In this streaming session I did yesterday, I explain those problems and share how they can be fixed using the upcoming Media Library Pro.

Build a Remaining Character Count Component with Alpine.js

Link – Oct 29th 2020 – ryangjchandler.co.uk - submitted by Ryan Chandler

Learn how to build a remaining character counter in Alpine.js using only a few lines of code.

How the Pest PhpStorm Plugin Will Improve Your Testing Workflow

Link – Oct 29th 2020 – blog.jetbrains.com - submitted by Nuno Maduro

Users of Pest will be happy to know there's now a nice plugin to improves integration in PhpStorm.

Laravel Worldwide Meetup #4: GitHub Actions & Unconventional Autoloaders

Original – Oct 28th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

Here's the recording of Laravel Worldwide Meetup #4. Ryan Chandler showed a cool GitHub Action workflow to test a Laravel app. Next, Liam Hammet demonstrated some unconvential things you can do with PHP autoloaders.

Exploring PHP 8 features

Original – Oct 28th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read

In preparation for creating the Front Line PHP video course I needed to make myself familiar with the features that PHP 8 brings to the table. In this stream you can see me trying out some of these features for the first time.

How to get the most out of a discussion

Link – Oct 27th 2020 – engagor.github.io

Here are some strategies Toon Daelman uses in discussions.

Adding a subscription form to the web views of Mailcoach

Original – Oct 26th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read

After sending a new edition of my newsletter, I usually tweet out a webview URL together with a URL where people can subscribe to the newsletter. A webview is a hard to guess URL that people who didn't subscribe can visit to read the content of the newsletter.

Freek.dev