New Features In Laravel 8

Hello fellas! Today is a big day for the Laravel community as Laravel 8 has released early access to the documentation. Though the features are still on their way to update, there are tons of loaded features to give it a try.

---

Server Requirements

Make sure you have the following Laravel 8 requirements installed

1. PHP >= 7.3
2. BCMath PHP Extension
3. Ctype PHP Extension
4. Fileinfo PHP extension
5. JSON PHP Extension
6. Mbstring PHP Extension
7. OpenSSL PHP Extension
8. PDO PHP Extension
9. Tokenizer PHP Extension
10. XML PHP Extension

---

Laravel 8 Installation

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

---

PHP Artisan Serve Autoreload If Any Changes

Old Versions

In earlier versions of Laravel if you made any changes to .env files then you had to manually stop and start the server.

New Version

In the newer versions of Laravel as soon as you make any changes to the .env file, it's automatically detected and the server is reloaded by Laravel.

---

Routes Changes (web.php)

Old Versions

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('/', 'TestController@index');

New Version

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Http\Controllers\TestController;

Route::get('/', [TestController::class, 'index']);

---

Models Directory

Old Versions

In earlier versions of Laravel the models used to be under the App namespace. I personally used to create an app/Models directory and would put all my models in that folder.

New Version

In the newer version of Laravel, we have an app/Models directory by default.

---

Model Factory Classes

Old Versions

We just had a normal plain PHP files under database/factories directory

New Version

Eloquent model factories have been entirely re-written as class-based factories.

database / factories / UserFactory.php

<?php

namespace Database\Factories;

use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;

class UserFactory extends Factory
{
    /**
     * The name of the factory's corresponding model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $model = User::class;

    /**
     * Define the model's default state.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function definition()
    {
        return [
            'name' => $this->faker->name,
            'email' => $this->faker->unique()->safeEmail,
            'email_verified_at' => now(),
            'password' => '$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi', // password
            'remember_token' => Str::random(10),
        ];
    }
}

Usage

use App\Models\User;

User::factory()->count(50)->create();

---

Model Factory States

Similar to the older factory states but now inside the factory classes.

/**
 * Indicate that the user is suspended.
 *
 * @return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory
 */
public function suspended()
{
    return $this->state([
        'account_status' => 'suspended',
    ]);
}

---

Migrations Update (startingValue)

Soon we will be having startingValue to it as a starting id value in our database.

Eg: When you create new orders for customers and they don't want to know they were the first ones. LOL

public function up() {
  Schema::create('Orders', function(Blueprint $table){
    $table->id()->startingValue('1000');
    ...

   

---

Migration Squashing

When you have a large Laravel application you migrations might grow over the time and start flooding like anything.

Now you can squash many migrations files into 1 migration file, which will then get saved inside the database/schema directory.

php artisan schema:dump

// Dump the current database schema and prune all existing migrations...
php artisan schema:dump --prune

After squashing when you run the migration then first the database/schema migrations will run, then database/migrations directory migrations.

---

Job Batching

After performing a batch of jobs you can perform some other stuff.

The new batch method of the Bus facade may be used to dispatch a batch of jobs. Of course, batching is primarily useful when combined with completion callbacks. So, you may use the then, catch, and finally methods to define completion callbacks for the batch. Each of these callbacks will receive an Illuminate\Bus\Batch instance when they are invoked:

use App\Jobs\ProcessPodcast;
use App\Podcast;
use Illuminate\Bus\Batch;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Batch;
use Throwable;

$batch = Bus::batch([
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(1)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(2)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(3)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(4)),
    new ProcessPodcast(Podcast::find(5)),
])->then(function (Batch $batch) {
    // All jobs completed successfully...
})->catch(function (Batch $batch, Throwable $e) {
    // First batch job failure detected...
})->finally(function (Batch $batch) {
    // The batch has finished executing...
})->dispatch();

return $batch->id;

---

Improved Rate Limiting

Rate limiters are defined using the RateLimiter facades for method. The for method accepts a rate limiter name and a Closure that returns the limit configuration that should apply to routes that are assigned this rate limiter:

use Illuminate\Cache\RateLimiting\Limit;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\RateLimiter;

RateLimiter::for('global', function (Request $request) {
    return Limit::perMinute(1000);
});

Since rate limiter callbacks receive the incoming HTTP request instance, you may build the appropriate rate limit dynamically based on the incoming request or authenticated user:

RateLimiter::for('uploads', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user()->vipCustomer()
                ? Limit::none()
                : Limit::perMinute(100);
});

---

Tailwind Pagination Views

The Laravel paginator has been updated to use the Tailwind CSS framework by default.

---

Laravel Jetstream

Laravel Jetstream is a beautifully designed application scaffolding for Laravel. Jetstream provides the perfect starting point for your next project and includes login, registration, email verification, two-factor authentication, session management, API support via Laravel Sanctum, and optional team management.

Jetstream is designed using Tailwind CSS and offers your choice of Livewire or Inertia scaffolding.

---

Conclusion

More coming on soon. Stay tuned...

I hope this article helped you. Please share it with your friends.

Articles For You

SummerNote WYSIWYG Text Editor

Install Linux, Apache, MYSQL, PHP (LAMP Stack) on Ubuntu

TRUNCATE vs DELETE In MySQL

Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) Browser Web Push Notifications Using Javascript And PHP

What Is Method Chaining In PHP?

Create Zip File On The Fly With Streaming Download In PHP Laravel

Cache Static Files With NGINX Server

Integrate Google Translate Into Your Website

Automate Repeating Tasks In Linux Server With Cronjobs

Upload Image In PHP?

Supervisor For Laravel Queue Scheduling

NGINX Security Best Practices & Optimization

@stack @push and @prepend In Laravel Blade

Sass or SCSS @function vs @mixin

Make Laravel Controllers Slim By Skimming Form Validation Request