Why Laravel?

• Lots of great features/add-ons
  • Authentication/Authorization
  • E-commerce
  • artisan CLI
    • Similar to Symfony console
• Large community
• Very well documented
  • Laracasts
  • Documentation Website

Documented local dev

• Homestead if you use virtualbox
• Valet if you want to mostly DIY
• Forge to help you set up in the cloud

Easy to understand

• Simple Model-View-Controller (MVC) system
• Few(er) folders
  • App stores your application code
  • Routes stores your routes
  • Database stores your schema
  • Config stores your site configuration
  • Public stores your flat files
  • Resources stores your theme files

Install homestead

Download Laravel

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

• php artisan migrate:install

Install Users

• php artisan make:auth
• php artisan migrate

Use Artisan (CLI) to create the model

• php artisan make:model -mc Training

Update schema

• database/migrations/*_create_trainings_table.php
• Add our table fields
• php artisan migrate
• Similarly, create new migrate files to do migrations
  • ​php artisan make:migration <name_of_migration>

Create our model

• app/Training.php
• $fillable_fields are user input fields
• public functions would be attributes / relationships you wish to establish
• public function authors() {
    return $this->belongsTo('User', 'user_id');
  }
• public function trainings() {
    return $this->hasMany('Training');
  }

None of this seems to do anything...

Create our route

• routes/web.php
  • Similar for api.php, cli.php, etc
• Add middleware (like auth/permissions) to limit route access
• Group routes to satisfy criteria
• Separate between GET and POST requests
• Now you can link to them in templates

Create controller

• Controllers are where routes point
• Gather info from wherever necessary (like models)
• Show them using the view
  • return view('template-minus-php', $args);
  • return ['status' => 'yay', 'content' => 'json-here']
  • Hence M-V-C!
• app/Http/Controllers/TrainingController.php

Create view

• Uses Blade templating engine by default
  • Relatively simple to understand
• Can switch to use Twig if you want!
• @extends('layout.layoutName')
• @section('sectionName')
  • @foreach($var_array as $var)
  • @endForEach
• @endSection

Features not covered

• Validation
  • Validate your models easily
• Seeding the database
  • No need for db dumps!
• Testing
• Docs go over everything

How does this relate to Drupal?

Write entities specific to your needs

• Everything does not need to be a node
• Should not be a node
• Create new entities using Drupal Console
• Learn how to model your content
  • Will look great in your APIs as well :)

Not everything needs to be Drupal

• Not everything needs annotations
• Not everything needs to be so abstracted
• Not everything needs 100+ modules
  to maintain