Freek.dev

Laravel / PHP / AI

Tidy up your tests with class-based model factories

John Bonaccorsi, a developer from Tighten, wrote some good ways of structuring model factories in a Laravel app.

Thanks to class-based model factories, our test setup went from being a bloated mess to simple and succinct. The optional fluent methods give us flexibility and make it obvious when we are intentionally changing our world. Should you read this blog post and immediately go and update all of your model factories to be class-based instead? Of course not! But if you begin to notice your tests feeling top heavy, class-based model factories may be the tool to reach for.

https://tighten.co/blog/tidy-up-your-tests-with-class-based-model-factories

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A good issue

Sebastian De Deyne, package creator and JavaScript wizard at Spatie, gives some good tips on how to report an issue well.

Maintaining a number of open source projects comes with a number of issues. Reporting a good issue will result in a more engaged approach from project maintainers. Don't forget: there's a human behind every project.

https://sebastiandedeyne.com/posts/2018/a-good-issue

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Improving the performance of spatie/laravel-permission

Barry van Veen recently fixed an interesting performance issue at our permissions package.

Recently I was investigating the performance of an application we have built at SWIS. To my surprise, one of the most excellent costly methods was part of the spatie/laravel-permission package. After reading some more it was clearly a performance issue that could be improved upon. Since the solution was already clearly outlined it was quite easy to code it and submit a pull request.

https://barryvanveen.nl/blog/46-improving-the-performance-of-spatie-laravel-permission

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Automatically close stale issues and pull requests original

by Freek Van der Herten – 5 minute read

At Spatie we have over 180 public repositories. Some of our packages have become quite popular. We're very grateful that many of our users open up issues and PRs to ask questions, notify us of problems and try to solve those problems, ... Most of these issues and PRs are handled by our team. But…

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Registering macro's in Laravel using a mixin

Rachid Laasri explains how to easily register multiple macros at once using the mixin function present on the Macroable trait.

Laravel Macros are a clean way to add pieces of functionality to classes you don’t own (core Laravel components) and re-use them in your projects. It was first introduced in the 4.2 version but it was only recently that I discovered the ability to define class-based macros. So, this is what this article is going to be about.

http://rachidlaasri.com/php/laravel/macro/2018/04/28/class-based-macros.html

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The Future of Programming

Here's an amazing talk by "Uncle" Bob Martin where he gives an amazing overview of the history of programming and where he thinks it's headed.

How did our industry start, what paths did it take to get to where we are, and where is it going. What big problems did programmers encounter in the past? How were they solved? And how do those solutions impact our future? What mistakes have we made as a profession; and how are we going to correct them. In this talk, Uncle Bob describes the history of software, from it’s beginnings in 1948 up through the current day; and then beyond. By looking at our past trajectory, we try to plot out where our profession is headed, and what challenges we’ll face along the way.

Can't wait for his talk at this year's Laracon US.

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Array destructuring in PHP

Frank de Jonge, author of the great EventSauce and Flysytem packages, wrote a blopost on how to use array destructuring in PHP.

In PHP 7.1 the array type has become even more powerful! An RFC was accepted (and implemented) to provide square bracket syntax for array destructuring assignment. This change to the language made it possible to extract values from array more easily.

https://blog.frankdejonge.nl/array-destructuring-in-php/

Not mentioned in Frank's excellent post is PHP's ability to destructure arrays in foreach loops.

$members = [
	[1, 'Seb'],
	[2, 'Alex'],
	[3, 'Brent'],
];

foreach ($members as [$id, $name]) {
   // do stuff with $id and $name
}

You can even specify in which variable a value of a specific key should go:

	$members = [
	['id' => 1, 'name'=> 'Seb', 'twitter' => '@sebdedeyne' ],
	['id' => 2, 'name'=> 'Alex', 'twitter' => '@alexvanderbist'],
	['id' => 3, 'name'=> 'Brent', 'twitter' => '@brendt_gd'],
];

foreach ($members as ['twitter' => $twitterHandle, 'name' => $firstName]) {
	// do stuff with $twitterHandle and $firstName
}

Very neat!

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Make a clear distinction between different layers of validation

In an older, but still very interesting article, Mattias Verraes has some interesting thoughts on form, command and model validation.

Many of the frameworks I’ve worked with, promise to separate responsibilities with MVC. In practice, they end up coupling everything to everything. The forms are coupled to the models, and there’s a grand unified validation layer. This may be convenient at first, but it breaks down for larger systems, and creates headaches when having to support multiple clients. My approach is to clearly separate the validation for the form itself, from the Command validation and the model validation.

http://verraes.net/2015/02/form-command-model-validation/

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What's new and changing in PHP 7.3

Ayesh Karunaratne made a good summary of the new stuff coming in PHP 7.3 which will be released by the end of the year.

This is a live document (until PHP 7.3 is released as generally available) on changes and new features to expect in PHP 7.3, with code examples, relevant RFCs, and the rationale behind them, in their chronological order.

https://ayesh.me/Upgrade-PHP-7.3

The trailing comma in function and method calls seems nice!

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Combing legacy code string by string

Mattias Noback gives some good tips for refactoring legacy code.

"Combing" legacy code by untangling the strings is a good way to improve it and take back control over it. In existing legacy code, you should stop (re)using existing methods, making them ever more generic. Instead, you create new methods, and copy code from existing ones, allowing you to simplify this copied code and end up with a manageable class.

https://matthiasnoback.nl/2018/04/combing-legacy-code-string-by-string/

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FP vs. OO

In a new post Uncle Bob explains that you shouldn't have to choose between functional programming and object orientation.

In this blog I will make the case that while OO and FP are orthogonal, they are not mutually exclusive. That a good functional program can (and should) be object oriented. And that a good object oriented program can (and should) be functional. But to accomplish this goal we are going to have to define our terms very carefully.

http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2018/04/13/FPvsOO.html

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How CircleCI Improved Our Build Time

In a new post on his Medium Blog, Laravel.io maintainer Dries Vints wrote how he managed do drastically improved the build time of the popular forum.

CircleCI 2.0’s builds run with Docker which makes spinning up new instances super fast. If you use pre-built images which are customized to your needs, you don’t even need to do any provisioning during the build which saves you quite a bit time. Pulling various images and orchestrating them in a CircleCI 2.0 config allows for very rapid build times. If you add their new workflows to their mix you could easily enable parallelization and speed things up even more.

https://medium.com/laravelio/how-circleci-improved-our-build-time-8d5c40b8cc60

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