The native array_filter() in PHP and collect()->filter() in Laravel also work without providing a filter callback.

array_filter([0, 1, '', 'a', false, true, []]);
// [1, 'a', true]
 
collect([0, 1, '', 'a', false, true, []])->filter();
// [1, 'a', true]

If you don't provide a callback, PHP will remove all empty values from the array.

A stale while revalidate cache macro by Rias Van der Veken. With stale while revalidate, expired cache items will still be used when requested, but the data will be revalidated right after. That means the current request will be handled faster than if the cache would have to be revalidated, and the next request will receive fresh data.

Stale while revalidate is often used in web applications, popularized by Vercel's SWR React library.

Stefan Zweifel explains how he stores user preferences in a Laravel application using spatie/laravel-data. With the data package, you can store user settings as a blog of JSON in your database—so you don't need to update your table schema for every change—and have a typed object to work with in code.

He mentions poor query performance as a possible tradeoff if you need to query the database for a specific value.

One thing to keep in mind is that querying for specific settings can lead to performance issues and should probably be avoided.

If your app regularly needs to query for users who have selected a particular date_format , it's better to promote this setting to its own column. This makes the work of your database and possible indexing much easier.

If this is something you need, you could solve it with a virtual column mapped to a JSON value of the settings object. There's a nice tutorial on that on the Kirschbaum blog

Here's a quick trick with the :only-child selector to display an empty state in a list.

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A short & sweet overview of get(), cursor(), chunk(), and lazy() to retrieve models from the database. It's a tradeoff between speed and memory usage.

At Laracon US we announced we're working on a new course at Spatie: Full Stack Artisan.

In Full Stack Artisan, we'll dive into building Laravel applications with Inertia, React, TypeScript, view models, our Laravel Data package, and more.

Last week I took a break from working on course content to set up branding and a landing page.

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Today I was looking for a way to create a custom Laravel validation rule without the overhead of a new class. The rule I needed would only be used in one place, so wanted to keep it close to (or in) the request class.

Upon re-reading the validation docs, I learned that Laravel supports closures as rules.

class JournalEntryRequest extends Request
{
    public function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            // …
            'lines' => [
                function (string $attribute, mixed $value, Closure $fail) {
                    $debit = collect($value)->where('type', 'debit')->sum('amount');
                    $credit = collect($value)->where('type', 'credit')->sum('amount');
 
                    if ($debit !== $credit) {
                        $fail("Debit and credit don't match.");
                    }
 
                    if ($debit !== 0) {
                        $fail("Amount must be greater than 0.");
                    }
                },
            ]
        ];
    }
}

Just what I needed!

When you want to compare two database columns in Laravel, you can't use where because it treats the argument you're comparing to as a value.

Instead, Laravel has a whereColumn method you can use to compare a value to another column's value.

// Retrieve posts that were updated after
// they were published.
 
Post::query()
    ->whereColumn('updated_at', '>', 'published_at')
    ->get();

When using whereHas in Laravel, it's not uncommon to also eager load the relation using with.

$posts = Post::query()
    ->with('author')
    ->whereHas('author', function (Builder $query) {
        $query->where('name', 'Seb');
    })
    ->get();

Laravel also has a more succinct method that combines the two: withWhereHas.

$posts = Post::query()
    ->withWhereHas('author', function (Builder $query) {
        $query->where('name', 'Seb');
    })
    ->get();

Putting this in a blog post because I always forget.

To view PHP logs from Laravel Valet:

open ~/.config/valet/Log/php-fpm.log

To view NGINX logs from Laravel Valet:

open ~/.config/valet/Log/nginx-error.log

In Laravel, you can register a class as a singleton to always resolve the same object.

However, you might want to build another instance of the class. You could manually construct the class without Laravel's container, but if it has a bunch of dependencies it can be tedious.

With the build method, Laravel won't resolve a registered instance of the class, but build a new one with the container.

// AppServiceProvider::register()
$this->app->singleton(MastodonClient::class);

// Resolve the singleton instance from the container
$mastodon = resolve(MastodonClient::class);
 
// Build a new instance
$anotherMastodon = app()->build(MastodonClient::class);

This can be useful when a Laravel package registers a class as a singleton but you need another instance.

Freek shares a few patterns we employ to let developers override behaviour in our packages.

One of the ways we keep maintenance burden low is by making our packages customizable. In this blog post, I'd like to cover some of our best tips to make a Laravel package easy to customize. Some of these tips will apply to regular projects as well.

Laravel 9 is fresh out the door, and it contains a small contribution of mine: a new callOnce method for database seeders.

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An overview on view models in Laravel

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The other day I needed to sort a dataset in MySQL and ensure one value was always at the end. I never fully understood how order by works, so I did some research on how to solve my problem and how order by behaves.

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