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

Developed by Derick Rethans, Xdebug 2 is the current stable version. Xdebug 3 had its first RC release out just a few days ago, and this post benchmarks the performance improvements in the new version.

On Exactitude in Technical Debt

Nov 18th 2020 – www.oreilly.com

Technical debt is not simply a measure of the specific work needed to repay the debt; it is the additional time and effort added to all past, present, and future work that comes from having the debt in the first place.

The 6 Stages of Spam Protection

Nov 18th 2020 – laracasts.com

Jeffrey Way shares the strategies he uses to combat spam on the Laracasts forum.

Laravel Media Library: Load Only 1st Picture Efficiently

Nov 16th 2020 – naxon.dev - submitted by Daniel Naxon

I needed to display only the first picture from my Product's model media collection and found my app running five queries and hydrating 16 models with only four products to display 😱 . Here's how I ended with only two queries and eight models.

Sunsetting PHP Faker

Nov 16th 2020 – marmelab.com

In this post, Francois Zaninotto explains why and how he stopped working on Faker.

Media Library Pro makes uploading files to a Laravel app a breeze original

Nov 12th 2020 by Freek Van der Herten – 14 minute read

I'm proud to announce that Media Library Pro is now available. Media Library Pro is an add-on package for our free Media Library base package. It contains a set of Blade, Vue and React components that make it easy to upload files to media library and to manage files inside of a media library collection.

In this blog post, I'd like to introduce Media Library Pro to you.

Object oriented code done right

Nov 10th 2020 – front-line-php.com

Here's an entire chapter taken from Front Line PHP, a course on building moderns apps with PHP 8

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.

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()

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

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.