How to customize Jetstream and Laravel Spark original
by Freek Van der Herten – 17 minute read – Edit
Originals — posts I've written myself.
A package to prefix ids in a Laravel app original
by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read – Edit
We've released a new package called spatie/laravel-prefixed-ids. In this post, I'd like to tell you all about it.
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Determining the start of the next business day in Oh Dear original
by Freek Van der Herten – 9 minute read – Edit
When a site is down, Oh Dear sends a notification every hour. Since last year, our notifications can be snoozed for a fixed amount of time (5 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, one day).
In the evenings and weekends, our users might not want to receive repeated notifications. That's why we've added a nice human touch: all notifications can now be snoozed until the start of the next workday.
In this blog post, I'd like to share some of the code that powers this feature. We'll focus on how the start of the next workday is calculated.
A mail driver to quickly preview mail in Laravel apps original
by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read – Edit
Using our laravel-mail-preview package, you can quickly display mails that are sent by your Laravel application in your browser.
Today, we've released v5 of the package. In this blog post, I'd like to tell you all about it.
Simplifying service providers in Laravel packages original
by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read – Edit
In almost every Laravel package, there is a ServiceProvider class responsible for registering bindings package resources such as config files, views, migrations, ...
While preparing a workshop that I gave on package development, I watched some videos of our own Laravel package training video course again. While watching the videos on using the service provider again, I had the idea to simplify how resources can be registered.
Meanwhile, I've fleshed out the idea and release it as a new package called laravel-package-tools. In this blog post, I'd like to introduce the package to you.
Introducing Ray: a debugging tool for pragmatic developers original
by Freek Van der Herten – 17 minute read – Edit
I'm proud to announce the immediate release of Ray, a desktop app that vastly improves your debugging experience. Ray is a dedicated window to send dumped values to. It has a lot of features that help you find and fix bugs faster.
Ray is available for macOS, Windows and Linux.
In this blog post, I'd like to share why and how we've built Ray. If you just want to know what Ray is, head to the Ray homepage.
Announcing our secret project original
by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read – Edit
These past few months, my team and I have worked on something that we think will be very usefull for PHP and Laravel devs.
At 14:30 CEST you can see me release it live in this stream on YouTube.
I've already shown our project to a couple of friends. This is what they said:
This is a really innovative and exciting project in a space that doesn't have many options.
— Jess Archer (@jessarchercodes) January 7, 2021
And with very promising Linux support in the pipeline too! 😍
We're definitely talking about a daily developer experience improvement! https://t.co/tDHgsn7NiG
For amateur developers only! https://t.co/srNgSM21ym
— Michael Dyrynda (@michaeldyrynda) January 6, 2021
Get ready for something awesome! https://t.co/1nr5VbO4nY
— James Brooks (@jbrooksuk) January 6, 2021
I already had the chance to take a look at it. It looks very promising. I think you will like it :) https://t.co/viITNC8QSt
— Stefan Bauer (@stefanbauerme) January 6, 2021
A recap of 2020 original
by Freek Van der Herten – 35 minute read – Edit
What a year this has been. I guess that in January, nobody suspected that we'd got ourselves a worldwide pandemic on our hands.
For many people, 2020 has been a pretty rough year. While the pandemic also impacted me, I think that the problems I have only exist in my head. Nobody around me had health or financial troubles, and I also don't have any complaints on those fronts. That makes me a very lucky man.
In this blog post, I'd like to reflect on the things I did in 2020.
Refactoring the mailcoach codebase to domains original
by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read – Edit
Triaging feedback on GitHub using issues and discussion original
by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read – Edit
Yesterday, GitHub launched discussions as a public beta. We've been using the feature for a couple months. In this blogpost, I'd like to share how we will use discussions for our repos.
Moving PHP and Laravel tests from Travis CI to GitHub Actions original
by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read – Edit
Earlier this year, Travis CI announced a new pricing model that effectively ends the generous open-source offering they had for many years. It seems that, even though there were some plans to provide free resources for OSS projects in the future, all activity for OSS projects has stopped.
At our company, we create a lot of open-source projects and packages. Beginning 2020, we already moved most of our stuff to GitHub actions.
Sure, you can read the GitHub actions docs to start learning the possibilities, but in my experience, it might be better to see some examples of practical uses cases. Here are some interesting links that might help you get started with GitHub actions.
Building the Imagick PHP extension from master original
by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read – Edit
At the time of writing there is no version of Imagick compatible with PHP 8. Fortuntely, the version on the master brach of the Imagick repo seems to work. Here's how you can use it. Clone the repo somewhere on disk Follow the steps mentioned here to create the extension. cd <directory of cloned…
My current setup (end 2020 edition) original
by Freek Van der Herten – 11 minute read – Edit
After tweeting out a screenshot, it often get questions around which editor, font or color scheme I'm using. Instead of replying to those questions individually I've decided to just write down the settings and apps that I'm using.
A better way to work with a backtrace in PHP original
by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read – Edit
To get the backtrace in PHP, you can use the debug_backtrace function. By default, it can be hard to work with. Using our newly released spatie/backtrace package, this becomes much simpler.
Let's dive in!
Media Library Pro makes uploading files to a Laravel app a breeze original
by Freek Van der Herten – 14 minute read – Edit
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.
Store strongly typed settings in a Laravel app original
by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read – Edit
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
by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read – Edit
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
by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read – Edit
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.
spatie/once v3 has been released, now uses a PHP 8 WeakMap original
by Freek Van der Herten – 3 minute read – Edit
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
by Freek Van der Herten – 1 minute read – Edit
Here's the recording of a casual conversation between Christoph Rumpel and me we had last week.
