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Freek.dev

Laravel / PHP / JavaScript

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First Experiences with Symfony 4 & the Symfony Community

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Getting to know another framework and community can be a daunting task. But in case of Symfony it proves not to be that hard. On his blog Matthew Setter shares his first steps into Symfony.

Recently, I decided to learn the basics of the Symfony (4) framework, so that I could better understand one of my client's applications, and provide better support to it. I never expected to use such a well-rounded framework. Nor did I expect to encounter such an engaged and supportive community. Here's the story.

https://www.matthewsetter.com/first-experience-with-symfony/

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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.

Laravel Excel — Lessons Learned

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Last week Laravel Excel v3 was released. In a post on his company blog Patrick Brouwers writes the story of why and how v3 was released.

Laravel Excel (https://github.com/Maatwebsite/Laravel-Excel) turned 4 years last November and has reached almost 6 million Packagist downloads. A good time to reflect on 4,5 years of open source development.

https://medium.com/@maatwebsite/laravel-excel-lessons-learned-7fee2812551

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Nothing is Something

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Here's a video of a great talk by Sandi Metz she gave at RailConf 2015.

Our code is full of hidden assumptions, things that seem like nothing, secrets that we did not name and thus cannot see. These secrets represent missing concepts and this talk shows you how to expose those concepts with code that is easy to understand, change and extend. Being explicit about hidden ideas makes your code simpler, your apps clearer and your life better. Even very small ideas matter. Everything, even nothing, is something.

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Server side rendering JavaScript from PHP

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My colleague Seb did some amazing work with the creation of two packages that make it easy to get started with server side rendering in PHP. In a new post on his blog he'll tell you all about it.

Server side rendering is a hot topic when it comes to client side applications. Unfortunately, it's not an easy thing to do, especially if you're not building things in a Node.js environment.

I published two libraries to enable server side rendering JavaScript from PHP: spatie/server-side-rendering and spatie/laravel-server-side-rendering for Laravel apps.

Let's review some server side rendering concepts, benefits and tradeoffs, and build a server renderer in PHP from first principles.

https://sebastiandedeyne.com/posts/2018/server-side-rendering-javascript-from-php

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Today we hit 10 million PHP package downloads

Original – by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read

For the past few years Spatie, the company where I work, has released many Laravel and PHP packages. Those packages are primarily built to be used in our own projects. We do not operate in a void. We have a community around us. They use our work. They help to make our packages better by submitting…

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Responsive images done right

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Our team is currently prepping a new version of our medialibrary. One of the highlights is support for responsive images. On his blog my colleague Brent explains what it entails and why it is important.

I want to share some thoughts on responsive images. I'll write about a certain mindset which many projects could benefit from: small- and mid-sized web projects that don't need a full blown CDN setup, but would enjoy the performance gain of responsive images.

https://www.stitcher.io/blog/responsive-images-done-right

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10 Tips for Javascript Debugging Like a PRO with Console

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console.log isn't the only command that can help you debug JS. Yotam Kadis, Editor of AppsFlyer, shares 10 more ways.

For the past decade, one of my passions is front-end development (especially javascript). As a craftsman, I love learning new tools of the trade. In this story, I’m going to give you some awesome tips for debugging like a pro, using the good old console.

https://medium.com/appsflyer/10-tips-for-javascript-debugging-like-a-pro-with-console-7140027eb5f6

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7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design

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On their mutual Medium blog, Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger published an excellent post that offers 7 actionable tips to make your stuff look better.

It’s easy to throw your hands up and say, “I’ll never be able to make this look good, I’m not an artist!” but it turns out there are a ton of tricks you can use to level up your work that don’t require a background in graphic design. Here are seven simple ideas you can use to improve your designs today.

https://medium.com/refactoring-ui/7-practical-tips-for-cheating-at-design-40c736799886

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Take the power back

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iA writer is a great app to write text without any distractions (I'm not paid to say this ?). On their website the developers wrote an inspirational article that urges you to not only consume content, but also to create it.

You may have heard that the best way to deal with the “information overload” is to switch off your devices. To take a break from the Internet. Go for a run. Roll out the Yoga mat. Read a book. Talk to your friends. Switching off is good advice. But eventually, you’ll be back. How about changing? Changing from passive, to active. From scroll to search, from react to rethink, from like and retweet to write and link.

https://ia.net/topics/take-the-power-back/

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Build a newsletter chatbot in PHP

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On his blog Christoph Rumpel explains how you, using BotMan, can create a bot where users can subscribe to content updates.

Email has been a great channel for staying in touch with your audience for years. But times are changing and messengers are taking over communication. Let's see how I used Facebook Messenger to build a little newsletter bot for my upcoming book "Build Chatbots with PHP".

https://christoph-rumpel.com/2018/02/build-a-newsletter-chatbot-in-php-part-1

Pretty cool! I might add a bot to this very blog soon.

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Beyond React 16

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Today at the JSConf in Iceland, React core developer Dan Abramov demonstrated some very cool features that will soon land in React.

We’ve built a generic way to ensure that high-priority updates don’t get blocked by a low-priority update. We call this time slicing. If my device is fast enough, it feels almost like it’s synchronous; if my device is slow, the app still feels responsive. We’ve also built a generic way for components to suspend rendering while they load async data. We call this feature suspense. You can pause any state update until the data is ready, and you can add async loading to any component deep in the tree without plumbing all the props and state through your app and hoisting the logic.

https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond-react-16.html

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Build User Interfaces by Composing CSS Utility Classes with Tailwind

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Simon Vrachliotis recorded a free Egghead.io video course on the kickass Tailwind CSS framework.

In this course, you'll learn how to handle responsive breakpoints, how to trigger specific element states, how to handle specificity, how to keep your bundle file size in check, and how to seamlessly extend Tailwind with your own custom utility classes. By the end of the course, you should have a firm understanding of how Tailwind works and be able to create your own tailor-made design system and utility class CSS toolkit for your next project!

https://egghead.io/courses/build-user-interfaces-by-composing-css-utility-classes-with-tailwind

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