Getting Started with Laravel 4

Discover Laravel – one of the most expressive, robust, and flexible PHP web application frameworks around

Overview

• Provides a concise introduction to all the concepts needed to get started with Laravel
• Walks through the different steps involved in creating a complete Laravel application
• Gives an overview of Laravel’s advanced features that can be used when applications grow in complexity
• Learn how to build structured, more maintainable, and more secure applications with less code by using Laravel

In Detail

PHP powers many of the largest websites on the planet. Yet, even though it was specifically created for the Web, its shortcomings never cease to frustrate developers. This is where a tool like Laravel comes in. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Laravel reuses tried and tested components and principles and bundles them to form a cohesive whole and makes PHP development enjoyable again.

Getting Started with Laravel 4 is a practical and concise introduction to the Laravel PHP framework. It covers its fundamental concepts and presents the many features that will boost your productivity when developing web applications. After introducing the key concepts and installing Composer, you will build a CRUD application and add more features to it in each successive chapter.

This book introduces you to a different and more enjoyable way of writing PHP applications. You will start by learning about the key principles and the same development practices that Laravel encourages. Then, in subsequent chapters, you will create and successively add more features to a web application.

You will learn how to use the arsenal of tools at your disposal and probably pick up some useful techniques along the way. Indeed, everything you will learn in this book is highly transferrable and applicable to other MVC frameworks. Laravel’s routing mechanism, templating language, and object-relational mapper will have no more secrets for you. You will learn how to authenticate users, write tests, and create command line utilities that interact with your application with disconcerting ease. In addition to this, you will probably be surprised by the simplicity and expressiveness of your code.

What you will learn from this book

• Install Laravel and other PHP packages with Composer
• Sketch out and structure your application with routes and controllers
• Create hierarchical templates with Blade
• Define models and how to issue database queries in PHP with Eloquent
• Authenticate users securely with minimal effort
• Avoid security issues and write bulletproof code
• Develop with confidence with the help of tests
• Set up and create powerful command line utilities

Approach

This book follows a practical and easy-to-follow approach and is packed with real-world examples to understand all the fundamentals and concepts in a very concise way.

Who this book is written for

This book is ideal for web developers who want to get up to speed with Laravel quickly. You are expected to have some experience with the PHP programming language – or any C-like languages such as JavaScript , Perl, or Java along with some understanding of basic OOP concepts. Any experience with MVC frameworks such as ASP.NET MVC or Ruby on Rails will certainly be beneficial but not required. Lastly, some familiarity with command line interfaces will also help but is not essential either.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Meeting Laravel
Chapter 2: Composer All Over
Chapter 3: Your First Application
Chapter 4: Authentication and Security
Chapter 5: Testing – It’s Easier Than You Think
Chapter 6: A Command-line Companion Called Artisan
Chapter 7: Architecting Ambitious Applications
Appendix: An Arsenal of Tools