Freek.dev logotype

Freek.dev

Laravel / PHP / JavaScript

In this section you can read posts I've written myself.

Why I don't use down migrations

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read

Every once in a while, someone opens a PR on one of our open source packages adding a down function to the migration. I usually close those PRs fast with a thank you and a message “We don’t use down migrations in our projects”.

While down migrations might seem like a safety net, they're often a false comfort that potentially creates more problems than they solve.

Instead of explaining this in every PR separately, let me share why we don't write down migrations and what we do instead.

Read more

How to monitor your Laravel app for critical vulnerabilities

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 6 minute read

A critical security vulnerability was just disclosed for Livewire v3, as Stephen Rees-Carter wrote about on Securing Laravel. The vulnerability (CVE-2025-54068) allows unauthenticated attackers to achieve remote code execution in specific scenarios. What makes this particularly concerning is that exploitation doesn't require authentication or user interaction - just a component mounted and configured in a particular way.

This vulnerability affects all Livewire v3 versions up to 3.6.3. If you're running any version in that range, attackers could potentially run arbitrary PHP code on your server. Stephan warns us the open-source nature of the fix means attackers may already be reverse-engineering the patch to identify and abuse the exploit.

Many production apps are probably running vulnerable versions right now, with their developers completely unaware. This is where automated security monitoring becomes invaluable - using Laravel Health to check for vulnerabilities, and optionally services like Oh Dear to send you notifications when issues are detected.

Read more

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.

Running PHP tests in parallel on GitHub actions

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 6 minute read

A couple of years ago, Laravel introduced a great feature which allows to run PHPUnit / Pest tests in parallel. This results in a big boost in performance.

By default, it determines the concurrency level by taking a look at the number of CPU cores your machine has. So, if you're using a modern Mac that has 10 CPU cores, it will run 10 tests at the same time, greatly cutting down on the time your testsuite needs to run completely.

A default runner on GitHub doesn't have that many cores, so you can't leverage parallel testing as good as in your typical local environments.

In this blog post, I'd like to show you a way of running your tests on GitHub, by splitting them up in small chunks that can run concurrently.

We use this technique at Oh Dear to cut down the running time of our vast testsuite from 16 minutes to only just 4. In this blog post all examples will come from the Oh Dear code base.

Read more

A package to display solutions on the Laravel error page

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 7 minute read

When Laravel switched to a simpler exception page, the ability to display solutions for an exception was lost.

Our latest package, called spatie/laravel-error-solutions brings back that powerful feature. When installed, it will display solutions for most common exceptions.

Here’s how that looks it:

And yes, some solutions, like the one in the screenshot above, can be executed on the exception page too.

In this blog post, I’d like to tell you all about it!

Read more

Creating beautiful invoices using Tailwind and Laravel PDF

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read

Last week, we released a new package called Laravel PDF that allows you to transform Blade views into PDFs. Under the hood, Chromium is used to perform the transformation. Because Chromium is an up-to-date browser, you can use any modern CSS you like.

Some people have asked if they can use Tailwind to style their documents. And I’m happy to report you can. Let’s take a look at a minimal example to showcase this.

Read more

Easily create PDFs in Laravel apps

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 6 minute read

We’ve released a new package called spatie/laravel-pdf, a batteries-included package to generate PDFs in Laravel apps. Under the hood, it uses Chromium to generate PDFs from Blade views. You can use modern CSS features like grid, flexbox, and even frameworks like Tailwind to create beautiful PDFs.

In this post, I’d like to introduce and demonstrate the package.

Read more